Erlang, the Next Java

Erlang is going to be a very important language. It could be the next Java. Its main problem is that there is no big company behind it. Instead, it is being pushed as an open source project. Its main advantage is that it is perfectly suited for the multi-core, web services future. In fact, it is the ONLY mature, rock-solid language that is suitable for writing highly scalable systems to run on multicore machines.

For more please check about the original articles:
Erlang the next Java

And more:
Erlang style concurrency
Programming Erlang
About Erlang