The purpose of this presentation is, on a side, to dissect the developments performed during last year as far as raster data support in GeoTools and GeoServer is concerned, while on the other side to introduce and discuss the future development directions. Advancements and improvements for the management of raster mosaic and pyramids will be introduced and analyzed, as well as the latest developments for the exploitation of GDAL raster sources. Extensive details will be provided on the latest updates for the management of multidimensional raster data used in the Remote Sensing and MetOc fields. The presentation will also introduce and provide updates on the JAITools and ImageIO-Ext projects. JAITools provides a number of new raster data analysis operators, including powerful and fast raster algebra support. ImageIO-Ext bridges the gap across the Java world and native raster data access libraries providing high performance access to GDAL, Kakadu and other libraries. The presentation will wrap up providing an overview of unresolved issues and challenges that still need to be addressed, suggesting tips and workarounds allowing to leverage the full potential of the systems.