Azul this week acquired Payara, a provider of a Java-based application server and microservices framework that extends the scope of the company’s portfolio beyond Java runtimes.

The two companies were previously allied in 2018 when Payara embedded the Azul Platform Core into Payara Server Enterprise. In addition, both companies have a long history of contributing to open source Java projects, including OpenJDK and Eclipse Jakarta EE Platform.

Azul CEO Scott Sellers said the acquisition will meld that commitment to open source to provide an alternative to legacy applications server platforms such as IBM WebSphere or Apache Tomcat, an open-source web server and servlet container used for running Java code.

Additionally, Payara has developed a lightweight application server, Payara Micro, to build and run cloud-native Java microservices.

Based on Jakarta EE and MicroProfile, an open source project for encapsulating Java code in containers that along with OpenJDK and Jakarta EE is being advanced under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation.

The acquisition is the first ever for Azul, and comes on the heels of an undisclosed majority shareholder investment made earlier this year in the company by the venture capital firm Thoma Bravo. The combination of the two companies provides Azul access to an additional application server revenue stream that is estimated to be a $26 billion total addressable market that is projected to grow 11% to 14% at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Azul has been at the forefront of a push to replace legacy Java virtual machines with OpenJDK and Jakarta EE to enable organizations to reduce their dependency on commercial Java software provided by Oracle and others. The acquisition of Payara provides organizations a pathway to modernize Java applications without having to rewrite them, noted Sellers. Azul has also partnered with Moderne to gain access to a platform that is used to accelerate application modernization initiatives, noted Sellers.

As a provider of a platform that leverages an open-source OpenRewrite Lossless Semantic Trees (LSTs) project to create structured representations of complex codebases developed by Moderne, the alliances with Diffblue and Azul provide deeper integrations with unit testing tools and a Java code analytics platform, respectively.

Mitch Ashley, vice president and practice lead for software lifecycle engineering at the Futurum Group, said the acquisition of Payara strengthens an open, enterprise-grade Java platform at a time when many organizations are reassessing their long-term dependence on proprietary platforms.

Enterprises want to move Java applications forward into cloud native and hybrid environments without rewriting what already works, he noted. Azul and Payara together are a more complete, open source-based platform that aligns with many of the realities of how Java is used in production today, added Ashley.

It’s not clear at what pace organizations are modernizing Java applications, but as the most widely used programming language in enterprise IT environments it’s not likely Java will be supplanted by any rival programming language any time soon. The challenge, as always, is finding a way to reduce the cost of running those applications while improving performance.