Azul momentum surges as enterprise Java demand jumps

Azul recorded strong momentum in FY26, driven by rising enterprise demand for its Java products.

Customer growth spanned all product lines, with new bookings rising especially sharply in finance, healthcare, retail and telecommunications. Year-on-year bookings growth reached 43% in finance, 606% in healthcare, 120% in retail and 241% in telecommunications.

Demand was driven by companies seeking to manage Java performance, application modernisation, cloud spending and software licensing exposure. Customers used Azul Prime, Azul Core and Azul Intelligence Cloud in environments where reliability and compliance were critical.

Product push

Among the main product developments were Azul Intelligence Cloud and the Azul Migration Toolkit. A feature called JVMI Inventory was introduced as a cloud service that continuously catalogues running JVMs, helping organisations identify Oracle Java instances, prioritise them for replacement or removal, and monitor any new instances that appear.

Azul also highlighted Prime Optimizer Hub, used by a global customer to deploy hundreds of applications and microservices across more than 10,000 JVMs from a single instance. The design allows JVMs to share optimisation data across a wider Java estate.

In Australia, electricity distributor Ausgrid moved to Azul Core, cutting Oracle Java licensing costs by 80%, reducing Java-related vulnerabilities by 99% and removing Oracle Java audit exposure.

Investment and dealmaking

During the year, Azul expanded its corporate footprint by entering an agreement for a majority strategic investment from Thoma Bravo, a move intended to support product development and broaden its enterprise reach.

Shortly after the transaction closed, Azul acquired Payara, a provider of software for Jakarta EE-based applications. The deal extended its reach beyond core Java runtime products and gave it a larger role in supporting customers' broader Java application estates.

These moves were aimed at strengthening Azul's position as enterprises modernise long-running Java systems while weighing the costs of public cloud infrastructure and commercial Java licensing. The combination of investment and acquisition also points to a more competitive market, as software suppliers seek to offer broader Java management and migration tools.

Channel growth

Partners remained a major source of sales, with 50% of Azul's business now coming through channel and alliance partners. The number of strategic value-added resellers and alliances grew by 73% over the year across EMEA, APAC and the Americas.

That expansion brought its total channel partner count to 346. Azul also launched a Managed Services Provider programme for Azul Intelligence Cloud, allowing partners to sell Java optimisation, licensing analysis, security risk assessment and compliance analytics as managed services.

It also expanded co-sell work with cloud providers including AWS and announced a series of technology alliances spanning software development, security and cloud cost management.

These included work with Moderne on identifying and refactoring unused code, JetBrains on Kotlin runtime performance, Chainguard on container security, RapidFort on Java container images, CastAI on cloud cost reduction and ActiveViam on financial analytics workloads in the cloud. Several of these partnerships focused directly on reducing infrastructure use and strengthening security in Java environments.

Market pressure

Azul's recent momentum comes as many large organisations review their long-term Java strategy. Those decisions are being shaped by pressure to keep older applications running, update them for cloud environments and manage software licensing costs at a time of tighter scrutiny on IT budgets.

Java remains deeply embedded in financial services, telecommunications, retail operations and public infrastructure, making migration decisions both technically difficult and commercially sensitive. Suppliers that can offer inventory tools, migration support and lower operating costs have found an opening with customers trying to reduce complexity without rewriting large application estates.

Azul also said its products and executives received industry recognition during the year, including awards for Prime and Intelligence Cloud and recognition for its channel programme and leadership team.

"FY26 was a defining year for Azul as enterprises increasingly relied on our platform to run Java with greater performance, predictability and cost control in complex, cloud-first environments," said Scott Sellers, Chief Executive Officer of Azul. "Our momentum reflects strong customer adoption, rapid innovation across our product portfolio and exceptional execution in our go-to-market strategy, positioning Azul for continued growth and leadership as global enterprises demand best-in-class Java solutions."