Enterprises consider ditching Oracle Java over cost worries

The percentage of organizations considering alternatives to Oracle Java has jumped significantly from 72 percent in 2023 to 88 percent today.

The Azul 2025 State of Java Survey and Report finds 99 percent of enterprises are using Java. The top reasons given for considering a migration away from Oracle Java include cost (42 percent), preference for open-source (40 percent), Oracle sales tactics (37 percent), uncertainty created by ongoing changes to pricing and licensing (36 percent), and restrictive Oracle policies (33 percent).

Nearly two-thirds of organizations report that Java workloads account for over 50 percent of their cloud compute costs. In a clear sign of inefficient resource allocation, 71 percent of companies have more than 20 percent unused cloud compute capacity they're paying for. Organizations are responding by taking steps to better align their cloud investments with actual usage including leveraging newer, more efficient compute instances and processors (35 percent) and utilizing a high-performance JDK (24 percent). Of those using a high-performance JDK, the top two reasons cited were to 'improve application performance' and 'optimize cloud compute costs.'

The survey also reveals significant challenges to application development productivity. 62 percent of respondents report that dead or unused code impacts their DevOps teams' effectiveness. Security concerns compound these challenges, with 33 percent reporting that their DevOps teams waste more than half their time addressing false positives from Java-related security vulnerabilities. Additionally, 49 percent of companies are still experiencing security vulnerabilities from Log4j in production -- three years after its initial discovery.

"Our report shows organizations are actively seeking ways to optimize their Java deployments to drive operational efficiency and cost predictability," says 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 optimization strategies, improvements in DevOps productivity, and innovation with AI."

Java’s growing role in artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly evident too, with 50 percent of organizations 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 and 72 percent of organizations say they will need to increase their compute capacity to support Java applications with AI functionality.

The full report is available from the Azul site and there's an infographic summary below.

Image credit: Rafael Henrique/Dreamstime.com