“This strategic acquisition is further testament to Azul’s commitment to support the needs of our global enterprise customer base. Payara delivers proven products that are naturally synergistic with our existing offerings and brings additional deep technical expertise to the world’s largest independent Java engineering team. Together, we will accelerate growth and innovation, expand our roadmap and deliver even greater value to our customers.”
“This is a major new chapter for Payara. After a strong and long-standing partnership with Azul, combining forces is the natural next step and positions us for accelerated growth. Together, we will strengthen mission-critical solutions for enterprise Java customers and deliver greater performance, security and innovation across the Java ecosystem.”
This acquisition brings together two complementary solutions to create a more comprehensive Java platform for enterprise customers. By combining Azul’s leadership in JVM performance and cloud optimization with Payara’s deep expertise in Jakarta EE and open-source application servers, we can offer a unified solution that supports everything from mission-critical workloads to modern microservices.
The synergy lies in expanded product capabilities, broader market reach, and accelerated innovation. Together, we deliver commercially supported open-source technologies across the Java stack, enabling faster, more secure, and cost-efficient deployments — all aligned with our long-term strategy for growth and industry leadership.
We are not disclosing the financial terms of this acquisition.
Following Azul’s majority strategic investment from Thoma Bravo, this acquisition aligns to Azul’s growth strategy and go-to-market acceleration initiatives by offering an expanded set of products for our enterprise customers.
Today, enterprises moving off traditional Java application servers like Oracle WebLogic and Red Hat JBoss EAP face significant barriers: fragmented tooling, complex cloud migration paths, inconsistent operational models, poor performance under modern workloads, and vendor lock-in to expensive proprietary ecosystems. Neither application platforms nor JVM providers alone fully solve these challenges.
The Azul + Payara integrated offering provides customers with a unified, enterprise-grade Java platform based on open-source that can support an organization’s entire Java fleet – from business-critical applications to IoT, microservices and modern Java frameworks.
Both companies already serve many of the most well-known, highly regarded enterprises around the world, and this acquisition further strengthens our presence and outreach.
Adding Payara’s solutions to Azul’s Java portfolio expands our offerings in the application server segment, which has an estimated $26 billion total addressable market (TAM) and projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11–14%.
This announcement builds on nearly eight years of collaboration between Azul and Payara, which began with the introduction of Azul Platform Core embedded into Payara Server Enterprise in 2018. Payara adds deep engineering expertise and proven go-to-market experience in the Jakarta EE (Java EE) space, strengthening Azul’s Java platform with complementary products and enhanced market reach. With this acquisition, Azul now provides commercially supported open-source solutions across the Java application stack, delivering faster, more efficient, secure and cost-effective Java deployments.
It is Azul’s intention to continue to use the Payara brand.
With two Java-focused vendors now working under one roof, current customers receive a broader product portfolio and partner ecosystem across the entire Java application and runtime stack.
Our combined offerings aim to simplify and accelerate migrations from legacy Java application servers, including Oracle WebLogic and IBM/Red Hat JBoss, in addition to providing a commercial support path for open-source application servers like GlassFish and Wildfly – all with better performance and lower TCO, and without risky rewrites.
We are currently reviewing our combined product portfolio and working through the integration of our two companies. We’ll communicate any changes to our product offerings well in advance so you can plan accordingly. Otherwise, it’s business as usual!
