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As Java marks its 30th anniversary, globally as well as India’s technology landscape stands at a pivotal moment. Azul is the only company 100% focused on Java. Millions of Java developers, hundreds of millions of devices, and the world’s most highly regarded businesses trust Azul to power their applications with exceptional capabilities, performance, security, value, and success.
Azul was founded in 2002 by Scott Sellers (the current CEO) and Gil Tene, who serves as the CTO. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Azul provides the Java platform for the modern cloud enterprise.
Azul customers include 36% of the Fortune 100, 50% of Forbes’ top 10 World’s Most Valuable Brands, all 10 of the world’s top 10 financial trading companies, and leading brands like Avaya, Bazaarvoice, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, LG, Mastercard, Mizuho, Priceline, Salesforce, Software AG, and Workday.
In this exclusive interview with CiOL, Scott Sellers, President, CEO, and Co-founder, Azul and Dean Vaughan, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Azul, talk about how Azul is navigating technology trends and has carved a niche by delivering high-performance, cost-effective Java solutions tailored to the evolving needs of multiple industries. Excerpts:
Can you talk about the inspiration behind founding Azul? What provoked you into this venture?
Scott Sellers: When we started Azul in 2002, Java was still in its early days. There was a lot of excitement around it, but it hadn’t yet been broadly adopted by large enterprises. We believed it had huge potential.
One of our co-founders, Gil, came from another company where he had used Java in some of the applications he developed. He became convinced that Java was going to fundamentally change how enterprise applications were built and deployed.
I came from a different background—more consumer-focused. I had founded a graphics chip company called 3dfx, which was eventually acquired by Nvidia in 2000. With that hardware perspective, I could see that the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)—the software engine that runs Java applications—had a lot of room for innovation. We believed we could build a faster, more performant JVM that could eliminate many of the consistency and latency issues Java was known for at the time.
From the beginning, our focus has been on serving global enterprises—specifically those running Java-based applications. Over the years, we’ve continued to grow our customer base and expand where and how we serve enterprises, while also adding products to better support the Java community worldwide. That’s how we started Azul—with the vision of building a better Java runtime.
Do you need to "sell" Java to your enterprise customers? Java often feels like the plumbing of the internet—everyone uses it, but few talk about it. How do you get people excited about something that’s invisible when it works perfectly?
Scott Sellers: Not really. Most enterprises of reasonable size and scale are already using Java somewhere in their stack. Whether it's financial services doing lightning-fast trades, or global retailers powering e-commerce platforms, Java is already at the core.
Think about what happens when you shop online. The platform recommends products, processes payments, manages logistics—all of that involves sophisticated backend systems, and many of them are Java-based. Streaming services like Netflix and ride-hailing apps like Uber are heavy users of Java. It’s less about “who uses Java” and more about “who doesn’t.”
So we don’t need to sell Java. What we offer is a better Java experience—more efficient, faster, and lower cost.
On Java’s evolution over the years and how it has stayed relevant?
Scott Sellers: Java has evolved significantly. Before Java 9 (around 2018), major Java releases followed a feature-based approach and came out every 3–4 years. By the time a new version was released, it was often already outdated.
Starting with Java 9, we shifted to a time-based release cadence—every six months, like clockwork, in March and September. Azul, along with companies like Oracle, Google, Amazon, IBM, and Red Hat, collaborates through the OpenJDK community to plan and deliver these updates.
This new rhythm has accelerated innovation. For example, modern CPUs support vector instructions—great for parallel computing tasks like AI and machine learning. Java now has capabilities to take advantage of that. It’s also become less verbose, so developers can write less code to accomplish more.
Other changes include better support for GPU offloading, and more streamlined interoperability with other programming languages and tools. All of this makes Java once again a leader in the developer ecosystem.
Can you talk about Oracle’s licensing changes and Azul’s opportunity?
Scott Sellers: When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, there were fears it might restrict Java’s open-source development. But Oracle has actually remained a cooperative player in OpenJDK, where all major Java development happens. This augured well for the IT industry.
That said, Oracle has made changes to how it licenses and prices Java—particularly with Oracle Java. The most controversial was their shift, as of January 5, 2023, to employee-based pricing. Now, enterprises must pay based on their total number of employees and contractors, regardless of actual Java usage. This has led to price hikes of 2x to 10x in many cases.
Azul offers a drop-in replacement that’s fully compatible, open source, and significantly more cost-effective. Enterprises can switch to Azul without any risk or disruption to their existing systems—it's like-for-like. This has led to a surge in demand for Azul’s offerings.
On Java’s role in heterogeneous IT environments
Scott Sellers: One of Java’s greatest strengths is its “write once, run anywhere” philosophy. You can write an app on your laptop and deploy it in the cloud, on a Linux container, or even in a car—and it just works. No need to recompile or restructure code.
Java runs everything from business applications, edge computing, payment systems, infotainment systems in vehicles, ATMs, to IoT devices and printers.
So when we talk about a fragmented tech landscape—cloud, IoT, streaming, AI—Java acts as a unifying glue. Its adaptability makes it ideal for all these diverse environments.
Cloud, for example, has evolved with serverless computing, containers, Kubernetes, and now new chip architectures like ARM (e.g., Amazon’s Graviton). Java works across all of them, and so do Azul’s products.
On India’s importance to Azul
Scott Sellers: We’ve had a significant presence in India since 2004, with part of our product development team based in Bangalore. India has always been an important geography for us, especially from an engineering talent perspective.
Dean Vaughan: We’ve had an engineering presence in Bangalore since 2004, and we see India as a critical piece of our global strategy.
India plays multiple roles:
- It's a gateway to the rest of the world, with many of our global customers having large engineering teams here.
- The talent pool is exceptional—we’ve built a strong R&D foundation here.
- From a sales and market standpoint, India has huge potential in banking, financial services, payments, and tech—industries where Azul’s Java solutions fit perfectly.
Thanks to regulatory mandates around software support in BFSI, and the government’s push for a cashless economy, there’s a booming market for high-performance, supported Java runtimes. We’re scaling up our India operations accordingly—adding account managers and customer success teams.
Oracle’s pricing model has also impacted Indian enterprises with large workforces—especially banks—making Azul a highly attractive alternative.
Where do you see Azul heading in the age of AI, are we moving to a new style of IT or will it fundamentally reshape the tech landscape?
Scott Sellers: AI won’t reshape everything, but it will change a lot. In the enterprise world, change takes time—but AI is gaining ground.
AI will:
- Drive more autonomous computing.
- Increase demand for high-performance runtimes.
- Accelerate the pace of application development.
Java, already a preferred choice for enterprise apps, is well-positioned to support AI-heavy workloads.
Also, AI is transforming the developer experience—code generation, debugging, documentation, and testing are all being enhanced by AI-powered tools. This means faster, more efficient software development, which ultimately increases computing demand—and reinforces Java’s relevance. We are very optimistic about the future.