January 17, 2018
News Highlights:
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Azul Systems (Azul), the award-winning leader in Java runtime solutions, today announced a new Zulu Enterprise support roadmap designed to help businesses adapt to the changing Java SE release cadence. Azul’s Zulu Enterprise offering provides certified 100% open source builds of OpenJDK compliant with Java SE specifications supported across a plethora of operating systems, containers and on-premises and cloud deployments.
The OpenJDK and Java SE release cadence and update plans have gone through radical changes recently. Starting with the release of JDK 9 (aka Java 9), the official new release cadence for Java SE consists of Long Term Support (LTS) releases along with a new class of “feature” releases. General availability of LTS releases is scheduled every 3 years, with additional feature releases every six months. These feature releases enable new capabilities to be added to the Java SE platform in a more rapid manner than the historical multi-year release intervals between for example JDK 6 and 7, and JDK 7 and 8.
The new Java SE release cadence has several challenges for production environments:
Azul is addressing these challenges with an updated Zulu Enterprise support roadmap as follows:
Zulu Enterprise lifecycles for specific Java SE releases are available at www.azul.com/products/azul-support-roadmap.
Industry perspectives on Azul’s new Zulu Enterprise Support Roadmap
“While we are delighted that the Java SE platform is now evolving at a far more rapid pace, we were concerned with the very short lifecycles of the new planned feature releases” said Attila Bukta, Director of OMS Service Reliability Engineering at Workday, Inc. “We like having the ability to try new Java features as they become available, but are not at all interested in releases that reach end-of-life in only six months. We are very pleased with how Azul’s Zulu Enterprise support plans ensure that we can take advantage of interesting new features without having to wait 3 or more years between Java’s major releases.”
“Azul’s new Zulu Enterprise Support roadmap ensures that Payara’s customers can take advantage of the latest features of the JDK before the next long-term release is available,” said Steve Millidge, Payara Founder and Technical Director. “Our customers can develop and deploy mission critical applications on Payara Sever and Zulu Enterprise knowing that they will have time for a controlled transition between JDK releases on a fully supported platform.”
“While Oracle’s latest announcements provide a welcome path to accelerate the Java SE platform evolution, many Java users may find the short support lifespan of new feature releases incompatible with their best practices”, said John Abbott, Founder and Research VP at 451 Research. “Azul’s new Zulu Enterprise support roadmap provides an alternative for users and enterprises who wish to selectively standardize on new features without the three-year wait for long-term support releases of Java.”
“We applaud the changes in the Java SE roadmap and the commitment to include new features in a more rapid manner”, said Scott Sellers, Azul Systems president and CEO. “Azul’s Zulu Enterprise offering allows Java users to embrace new platform releases at the pace they desire, secure in the knowledge that they will not be driven off a support cliff when the public builds of Java SE are no longer being updated and maintained.”
Zulu Enterprise builds of OpenJDK are freely available for immediate download and use, without restrictions, from the Azul Systems website. For additional details on Zulu Enterprise support options and pricing, visit https://www.azul.com/products/zulu-and-zulu-enterprise/zulu-enterprise-java-support-options or contact an Azul representative or reseller at [email protected].