Azul, a company that boasts of focusing 100% on Java products, has announced having faster growth last year compared in products and in locations. This includes the demand for its OpenJDK products, following Oracle’s Java SE pricing policy change and enterprises facing challenges with the rising cost of cloud-related services.

In January 2023, Oracle introduced a licensing and supporting pricing for Java, which was based on a company’s number of employees. This includes all full-time, part-time, contractors, and consultants. This is also, regardless of the amount of Java used within the organization. Before, it was per Java user. The change was to simplify tracking and management of licensed products across desktops and servers. And yes, the outcome of this has seen companies paying more. There are claims of up to 12 times increase.  

Azul, with its Azul Platform Core, an OpenJDK-based Oracle alternative, has reported that they’ve seen tremendous growth in new customer bookings, with an increase of 49% year-over-year. The number of new Core customers grew by 36% year-over-year. 

“As with most universities, we are always looking for efficiency from our IT vendor relationships, not just by lowering costs, but also by eliminating uncertainty and distractions. Supporting so many departments and managing a wide range of vendor relationships means I can’t afford to worry about unexpected headaches such as price increases and audits,” said Emiliano Fisanotti, vendor management specialist and University Software Licensing Community executive member, The University of Sydney. “With Azul, we found a trusted partner who was easy to work with and provided a secure, drop-in replacement for Oracle Java.” 

“It’s clear that customers are frustrated with the uncertainty around Oracle Java’s frequent pricing and licensing changes — the switch last January was its fourth major change in four years, leaving customers looking for other options,” said Scott Sellers, co-founder and CEO at Azul. “Azul is the clear leader in helping ease that transition to our Java runtime and development platform that is based on the same open-source code as Oracle’s, with broader support, for typically at least 70% less in support fees.” 

Azul’s growth was also driven by new and existing customers prioritizing cloud cost optimization – customers typically experience a 20%+ decrease in their cloud and infrastructure costs because of deploying Azul’s high-performance Java runtime Azul Platform Prime – leading to an increase in new customer bookings of 30% year-over-year. Azul also maintained a 95% customer ARR retention rate last year. 

Outside of North America, Azul experienced high growth in its regions – Azul’s Asia-Pacific (APAC) region grew 37% year-over-year in new bookings and its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region saw an increase in new bookings last quarter of 69% year-over-year. 

The Oracle pricing adjustment not only impacted Azul but also created fresh avenues for revenue generation among its partners. Within a span of six months, a total of 36 new channel partners enrolled in the PartnerConnect program. Moreover, there has been a significant 67% surge in new customers engaging in business transactions through Azul's channel partners compared to the previous year. 

“Whenever changes occur in software pricing models, they present an opportunity for us to assist clients in modernizing their legacy infrastructure and optimizing their cloud investments. At SoftwareOne, we’ve forged partnerships with key software providers, such as Azul, to empower clients with comprehensive insights into their software estate, enabling them to unlock additional commercial opportunities,” commented Dwight Jordan, vice president of Software Alliances and Operations at SoftwareOne.