Everywhere you look, AI is changing the world. Half the world says we can’t comprehend the changes about to manifest, and the other half says there’s too much hype. Azul Vice President of Developer Relations Pratik Patel made three Java predictions for 2026, including the importance of cloud ROI, which you can read in our ebook, Future-Proof Your Enterprise: 8 Java Predictions for 2026.
In this post you will learn:
- DevOps and FinOps teams will converge around cloud ROI per application as a core metric
- Java will lead in composable business architectures
- JVM fleet collaboration becomes mainstream
DevOps and FinOps teams will converge around cloud ROI per application as a core metric
Cloud ROI per application has emerged as a core metric in modern, mature cloud strategies. It has moved beyond overall infrastructure cost savings to measure the specific financial value, efficiency gains, and revenue impact of individual applications or services. This granular approach allows organizations to:
- Identify which workloads provide the highest value
- Where to optimize
- Transition from broad cost-cutting to strategic, unit-based (product-centric) financial management.
Assigning cloud ROI metrics to specific product teams or services enables engineering to own their costs and their efficiency.
| Highlight: FinOps.org warns, “Without understanding how to track costs to benefits received, we are missing the context that tells us whether we are spending appropriately.” Read it here. |
Java will lead in composable business architectures
The majority of enterprise applications are moving away from the legacy monolithic architecture to a microservices one. This provides greater flexibility, delivering reusable components that can be assembled and reassembled quickly to support new products, workflows, or customer experiences. Java is well positioned to continue to be the major player in this area for several reasons.
- Java already runs most enterprise business logic: billing systems, supply chain logic, and other critical services are built in Java
- Mature framework ecosystem for modularity: Java frameworks naturally align with composability the way Spring Boot defines service boundaries
- Strong typing + contracts: Composable systems depend on stable contracts, and Java’s strengths include interface-driven design and backward compatibility
- Operational predictability: Composable architectures increase operational complexity, and Java’s strengths include predictable performance characteristics and decades of operational tooling
| Highlight: 3 ways to improve Java-based microservices. Read it here. |
JVM fleet collaboration becomes mainstream
Enterprises are optimizing and operating Java applications differently, moving from individual JVM tuning to collective intelligence across many JVMs running the same workload. This idea shows up increasingly in large-scale cloud deployments, especially where hundreds or thousands of JVM instances run the same services. And that shift will only accelerate in 2026.
For proof, look no further than Cloud Native Compiler, a feature of Azul Platform Prime. Cloud Native Compiler works with Platform Prime, Azul’s flagship Java runtime which outperforms OpenJDK on the Renaissance Benchmark Suite by 37%, to elastically scale up and down, reuse previously optimized compilations across connected JVMs, and improve their performance and startup times.
| Highlight: In September, Azul announced that a customer using Platform Prime had achieved 10,000+ JVMs collaborating and sharing performance optimizations, cutting cloud costs by more than 20%. Read it here. |
Read all the Java predictions
Azul collected Java predictions from some of the most renowned Java Champions worldwide to outline where the industry is headed. The verdict is that Java’s influence across the enterprise is only growing stronger. Read all eight predictions in one easy-to-read ebook.
