Azul acquires Payara to strengthen Java leadership

Azul has announced the acquisition of fellow Java solutions vendor, Payara. The announcement, which came as a surprise, comes with no details on what Azul paid. Neither company was willing to comment on that. The deal strengthens Azul’s market position and may not be its last. That is because the company has seen recent investment from Thoma Bravo, and it is likely that acquisitions were discussed as part of that deal.

Thoma Bravo announced a majority stake in the company in November and closed three days ago. That deal also saw existing investors Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital invest more in the company. The terms of the investment and the current valuation of Azul are currently unknown, although in 2020, when Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital took a majority stake, they paid US$240 million.

Scott Sellers, co-founder and CEO of Azul, said, “This strategic acquisition is further testament to Azul’s commitment to support the needs of our global enterprise customer base.

“Payara delivers proven products that are naturally synergistic with our existing offerings and brings additional deep technical expertise to the world’s largest independent Java engineering team. Together, we will accelerate growth and innovation, expand our roadmap and deliver even greater value to our customers.”

Two companies with a long history

The announcement talks about the complementary nature of both vendors’ products and businesses. That is important for customers. It means that they won’t have to choose between products from either vendor. Instead, it speaks to a wider platform that will deliver new capabilities and improve life for customers.

The release states, “The integrated offering provides customers with a unified, enterprise-grade Java platform based on open-source that can support an organisation’s entire Java fleet – from business-critical applications to IoT, microservices and modern Java frameworks.”

What will also hearten customers is that the two vendors have worked together for over eight years. Payara has used Azul Platform Core in its Payara Server Enterprise. It also has deep experience in the Jakarta EE (Java EE) space. According to the announcement, “Azul now provides commercially supported, open-source solutions across the Java application stack.”

Steve Millidge, founder and CEO at Payara, said, “This is a major new chapter for Payara. After a strong and long-standing partnership with Azul, combining forces is the natural next step and positions us for accelerated growth.

“Together, we will strengthen mission-critical solutions for enterprise Java customers and deliver greater performance, security and innovation across the Java ecosystem.”

Enterprise Times: What does this mean?

This is a strong statement of intent by Azul. Over the last few years, it has consistently grown its market share in the Java space. The vast majority of those gains have come at the expense of Oracle. Part of this is due to Oracle’s licensing model. Importantly, the majority comes from having credible alternatives and solutions.

The Java market continues to grow with increasing numbers of companies moving from Oracle to alternative providers. Azul is one of those, and this deal with Payara makes it a bigger player. It will be interesting to see if it puts any verifiable number on the value of this deal to its bottom line.

Additionally, who else is in its crosshairs? With Thoma Bravo now its majority owner, there will be funds available for acquisition. The question is, who?

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