News

Azul buys Payara to expand open-source Java stack beyond the JVM

• By John K. Waters
• January 7, 2026

Java platform provider Azul has acquired Payara, an application server company focused on Jakarta EE, as the vendor looks to expand beyond the Java runtime and sell a broader, commercially supported open-source stack to large enterprises.

In announcing the deal, Azul said the combined company will target customers modernizing older Java EE era applications and moving workloads to hybrid and cloud environments, while seeking alternatives to proprietary platforms. Payara sells enterprise products and support for Jakarta EE-based applications and microservices, a market segment that includes application servers used to run long-lived business applications in regulated industries.

"This strategic acquisition is further testament to Azul's commitment to support the needs of our global enterprise customer base," Scott Sellers, Azul's co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. "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."

Payara CEO Steve Millidge said the companies' existing partnership made a combination the "natural next step." "Together, we will strengthen mission-critical solutions for enterprise Java customers and deliver greater performance, security, and innovation across the Java ecosystem," Millidge said.

Azul is best known for its commercial Java offerings built around OpenJDK, including a distribution and support services used by enterprises running large Java estates. Payara, based in Malvern, England, provides supported Jakarta EE application server products, positioning itself as an option for organizations maintaining Java EE applications while modernizing for cloud native deployments.

The acquisition extends a relationship that began in 2018, when Payara embedded Azul Platform Core into Payara Server Enterprise, according to Azul. The combined portfolio is intended to give enterprises a single supported platform spanning the Java runtime and the application server layer, Azul said.

The deal follows Azul's recently completed majority investment from Thoma Bravo, alongside renewed minority investments from Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital, the company said. Thoma Bravo partner Adam Solomon called the transaction an expansion move in enterprise Java.

"The acquisition of Payara accelerates Azul's growth and broadens the company's reach across the global enterprise Java market," Solomon said in a statement. "Azul's category-defining innovations create a significant opportunity for global enterprises to leverage innovative and cost-effective open-source solutions to modernize their Java application fleets and reduce dependencies on proprietary platforms."

Azul framed the acquisition as a way to compete against proprietary alternatives, explicitly citing Oracle in its announcement. For large companies that have standardized on Java, the cost and complexity of licensing, support, and long-term roadmaps can be as important as performance, particularly when applications are difficult to rewrite and must be maintained over decades.

Payara has positioned its products to keep Jakarta EE-based applications viable as organizations adopt containers, Kubernetes, and microservices, while avoiding vendor lock-in. Azul said Payara's engineering expertise and go-to-market experience in Jakarta EE will strengthen Azul's platform and expand its reach.

The combined company will also seek to capitalize on what Azul described as a $26 billion total addressable market in the application server segment, projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11% to 14%, according to the statement.

Industry analysts and users have watched consolidation across enterprise software markets as private equity firms and strategic buyers look for predictable maintenance revenue and mission-critical workloads. Java remains one of the most widely used enterprise programming languages, and many organizations continue to run older application frameworks even as they build new services on cloud platforms.

Azul said millions of Java developers and "hundreds of millions of devices" rely on its software. The company said its customers include 36% of the Fortune 100. Payara said it supports mission-critical systems in sectors including finance and healthcare.

Both companies said they will continue to participate in open-source communities, including OpenJDK and the Eclipse Jakarta EE Platform project, aligning the acquisition with a strategy that emphasizes supported open-source infrastructure rather than proprietary platforms.