I succeeded in transitioning my workplace out of the dark ages about a year go; I chose Spring. If nothing else, use the IOC container and AOP. While it cannot reduce the xml-sit-ups, the Eclipse plugin does simplify their maintenance. I've not yet toyed with EJB3, so I have no comment in that respect. The other specific benefit of Spring is that the .NET side of the shop has the Spring port which eases the conceptual hurdles as engineers bounce from project to project. All that said, I'd not heard of Seam and I will be investigating it as an alternative.
