He seems to be in the "if it works now, why change it?" camp. So at the moment that means using Java Server Faces on the front end. I haven't had much exposure to the server-side, but I'm so not sure there is any good framework in place as it's closely coupled with the front end logic.

Your second comment is a good one. What I think he meant by "trend" was that last year Rails was what all the architects and leaders at the company were pushing for. His argument was that this year it's the same thing except with single page architecture (Backbonejs in this case).