Two years after Oracle introduced its employee-based pricing for Oracle Java SE, concerns remain high in 2024 as 82% of Oracle Java users expressed unease with its cost model — the same percentage that was observed in 2023, according to Azul.
The percentage of firms considering alternatives to Oracle Java has also jumped significantly – from 72% in 2023 to 88% today.
This is part of findings of a study conducted by Dimensional Research, covering 2,039 Java professionals across the United States and Canada; Europe; Asia; Australia and New Zealand; and Mexico, Central America and South America.
The top five reasons given for considering a migration away from Oracle Java (where respondents could select all that apply) include: cost (42%), preference for open-source (40%), Oracle sales tactics (37%), uncertainty created by ongoing changes to pricing and licensing (36%), and restrictive Oracle policies (33%).
These responses underscore that firms increasingly seek cost-effective, flexible, and transparent alternatives to Oracle Java to mitigate financial and operational risks.
Nearly two-thirds of firms report that Java workloads account for over 50% of their cloud compute costs. In a clear sign of inefficient resource allocation, 71% of companies have more than 20% unused cloud compute capacity they’re paying for.
Companies are responding by taking steps to better align their cloud investments with actual usage including leveraging newer, more efficient compute instances and processors (35%) and utilising a high-performance JDK (24%). Of those using a high-performance JDK, the top two reasons cited were to “improve application performance” and “optimise cloud compute costs.”
Also, the survey reveals significant challenges to application development productivity, with 62% of respondents reporting that dead or unused code impacts their DevOps teams’ effectiveness.
Security concerns compound these challenges, with 33% reporting that their DevOps teams waste more than half their time addressing false positives from Java-related security vulnerabilities.
Additionally, 49% of companies are still experiencing security vulnerabilities from Log4j in production – three years after its initial discovery.
Further, Java’s growing role in artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly evident, with 50% of organisations using Java to build AI functionality, surpassing both Python and JavaScript for AI development among Java-centric enterprises.
However, this AI adoption comes with infrastructure implications — 72% of firms indicate they will need to increase their compute capacity to support Java applications with AI functionality.
While the survey focused on organisations already invested in Java, it does highlight that Java developers continue to innovate with Java, leveraging the programming language’s robust library ecosystem to embrace emerging technologies like Al. This further solidifies Java’s role as a cornerstone for modern, future-ready application development.
“Our report shows organisations are actively seeking ways to optimise their Java deployments to drive operational efficiency and cost predictability,” said Scott Sellers, co-founder and CEO at Azul.
“As Java continues to be the backbone for business-critical applications in the enterprise, we’re seeing important trends — from the growing interest in Oracle Java alternatives to cloud optimisation strategies, improvements in DevOps productivity, and innovation with AI,” said Sellers.
