Summary
For years, the Java runtime landscape was relatively stable. Developers trusted that the JDK they downloaded was stable, tested, and ready for production. That changed in 2010 when Oracle introduced a more rigid approach to Java’s evolution, support, and licensing.
In this post you will learn:
- Alternative OpenJDK distributions attempt to fill the gap Oracle had created
- Using whatever JDK comes pre-installed or bundled with your application may no longer be good enough
- Azul Platform Core and Platform Prime offer a more complete, commercially supported and performance-tuned alternative
“Linux is free. So why do enterprises pay for it?” It’s a question that perfectly captures the tension between open-source software and commercial support — and one that reveals how modern IT strategies are built not just on code, but on reliability, service, and long-term value.
Linux started as a grassroots alternative to expensive UNIX systems. But the ecosystem was fragmented. Documentation was inconsistent. Updates and patches weren’t guaranteed. Nobody was on the hook if something broke in the middle of a critical deployment.
Red Hat saw the opportunity. It didn’t “own” Linux, but it offered a tested, curated, stable distribution with long-term support, security updates, and a commercial relationship. Companies could now sign a contract and get SLAs, support lines, and certifications. Red Hat’s subscription model helped it grow from a niche vendor to one of the most important software companies in the world.
That transformation — from free tool to enterprise platform — reshaped how organizations view infrastructure. They learned that while the code might be free, running it in production safely, securely, and efficiently requires expertise, predictability, and trust.
Now, the same shift is happening with the Java Virtual Machine.
The subscription shift: from bug fixes to business outcomes
Red Hat understood that organizations don’t buy software; they buy outcomes. They buy stability, security, and the ability to meet their own SLAs. They buy the peace of mind that if something goes wrong in production, they won’t be left searching GitHub issues or outdated mailing lists for help.
Over time, Red Hat added long-term support lifecycles, certifications for hardware and ISVs, and tools for managing large-scale deployments. More importantly, the company invested in customer success — proactively helping enterprises build and operate systems more effectively, not just reactively fixing bugs.
This evolution mirrors broader shifts across the software industry. The subscription model creates ongoing value through optimization, integration, and insight.
Companies like Azul are now applying that to the Java ecosystem.
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| Read Daniel Witkowski’s original article for more detail |
The JVM Is the operating system of your application
To most developers, the Java Virtual Machine is just a runtime — the engine that executes bytecode. But for anyone responsible for running Java applications at scale, the JVM is much more than that. It is the execution layer for your business logic, your APIs, your transaction systems, your fraud detection engines, and your real-time analytics.
In fact, the JVM plays a role that is functionally equivalent to an operating system — just at a different level of abstraction.
Like an operating system, the JVM manages memory, handles threading and concurrency, and coordinates execution. It allocates resources, enforces limits, collects garbage, optimizes performance at runtime, and provides telemetry. When an application runs slowly or crashes, it’s often the JVM that holds the key to understanding why.
But unlike Linux or Windows, which are understood by most DevOps teams as critical infrastructure, the JVM is still often treated as a black box — something shipped by the vendor or bundled with the application and left untouched until something goes wrong.
This is a strategic oversight.
Just as no enterprise would run production workloads on an unpatched Linux kernel maintained by volunteers, running business-critical Java applications on a generic, unsupported JVM is a risk. And it’s a missed opportunity because the JVM affects performance, latency, warmup time, memory usage, CPU utilization, and ultimately, cloud cost. It is a central part of your application’s operating environment. And that makes it worthy of strategic investment. Choosing the right JVM, and supporting it properly, is just as important as choosing the right operating system for your infrastructure.
The Java runtime landscape: fragmented and evolving
For years, the Java runtime landscape was relatively stable. Developers trusted that the JDK they downloaded was stable, tested, and ready for production.
That changed in 2010 when Oracle introduced a more rigid approach to Java’s evolution, support, and licensing.
Today, Oracle has reshaped the Java ecosystem:
- It has accelerated the release cadence from one version every few years to one every six months, starting with Java 9.
- It releases a Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Java every two years, and commercial support for Oracle JDK is only free for production use until a year after the next LTS version is released, putting organizations on a never-ending upgrade cycle to avoid paying license fees.
These moves created confusion and disruption in the Java community. Enterprises that had built systems on the assumption that the Oracle JDK was freely usable in production now found themselves in need of either a commercial license or a migration plan.
Most Java shops were used to upgrading every decade — not every three years. But without a paid support agreement, older versions of Oracle JDK would no longer receive updates, security patches, or fixes.
This prompted the rise of alternative OpenJDK distributions, each attempting to fill the gap Oracle had created. Azul Platform Core (including the Zulu runtime) and Platform Prime (including the Zing runtime) offered a more complete, commercially supported and performance-tuned alternative.
According to the 2024 State of the Java Ecosystem report by New Relic, the usage of Oracle JDK has declined in favor of OpenJDK distributions. And in Azul’s 2025 State of Java Survey & Report, 88% of Oracle Java users are considering switching to another Java provider.
While these runtimes are suitable for many use cases, they often lack the performance engineering, advanced garbage collectors, and support models required for large-scale, production-grade deployments. Organizations now face a new strategic decision: Which Java runtime will you standardize on — and why?
The default choice — using whatever JDK comes pre-installed or bundled with your application — may no longer be good enough for teams that care about performance or prioritize cloud cost optimization. And certainly not for those that expect enterprise-grade support.
Why Azul Platform Prime Is the enterprise JVM
In the same way that Red Hat stepped in to make Linux production-ready for the enterprise, Azul Platform Prime provides a supported, operationally consistent high-performance Java platform that goes beyond basic compatibility with OpenJDK.
Azul Platform Prime is a fully compatible, drop-in replacement for standard OpenJDK that has been carefully engineered for enterprise environments. What makes it stand out is not just performance — though that is often a clear outcome — but its commitment to stability, security, support, and cost-efficiency.
Stability and security are the foundation
At its core, Platform Prime is designed to provide a stable, reliable runtime for applications that cannot afford erratic behavior, unpredictable latency, or garbage collection-induced pauses. Technologies like the C4 (Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector) eliminate the traditional “stop-the-world” behavior of other JVMs, allowing applications to run with consistent response times and minimal operational surprises.
With Platform Prime, large organizations gain a JVM that behaves predictably under load, across environments, and during peak traffic — enabling smoother DevOps processes and fewer war room escalations.
Security, too, is tightly managed. Azul provides long-term support (LTS) for Java versions far beyond the community-maintained windows, ensuring that critical vulnerabilities are patched and available — even for legacy versions. For industries with regulatory and compliance needs, this extended lifecycle support is not a nice-to-have; it’s a requirement.
The shift to cloud-native architecture has made runtime efficiency more important than ever. Azul Platform Prime is uniquely positioned to reduce cloud infrastructure costs through smarter execution. Its Falcon JIT compiler, tuned for modern hardware, generates highly optimized code at runtime — reducing CPU cycles required for the same workload. Combined with efficient memory management and faster warmup times, this leads to lower total resource consumption.
Applications run faster, on fewer cores, using smaller cloud instances. This has a measurable impact not just on cloud cost, but also on energy efficiency and carbon footprint — a growing concern for sustainability-conscious enterprises.
Conclusion: Treat the JVM like the strategic infrastructure it is
There was a time when choosing Linux for your servers felt bold — even risky. Today, choosing not to use Linux in enterprise environments is the outlier. And not just any Linux. Companies choose supported, tested, enterprise-hardened distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux because they know what’s at stake. Infrastructure is not where you cut corners. It’s where you invest in resilience.
The same is now true of the JVM.
The JVM has quietly become one of the most widely deployed, mission-critical layers of modern enterprise software. It powers everything from banking systems to e-commerce platforms, healthcare infrastructure to telecom billing. It’s the invisible engine behind thousands of business processes. But while its presence is ubiquitous, the way organizations treat it varies wildly.
A growing number of enterprises are realizing that the JVM is their application’s operating system. It determines how your code behaves under stress, how efficiently your infrastructure is used, how fast you can respond to market demands, and how quickly you recover from failure.
That’s not something to leave to chance.
