Azul offers three distinct products as part of the Azul Platform. Azul Platform Core offers an alternative to Oracle Java that is functionally equivalent, less expensive to implement and with broader version support than provided by Oracle. Moreover, aside from Oracle it is the only vendor to separate essential security patches (CPUs), which you probably want to implement quickly, from more general patches/updates (PSUs), which you may well want to test more thoroughly (and/or delay until reports have come back from early implementers, in case of unanticipated impacts on your applications).
Azul also offers a performance JVM, Azul Platform Prime. Standard Java runtimes are effective in many applications but may have issues at extreme scale, during startup and warmup, or where consistency of response or performance (low latency) is essential.
- Azul Platform Prime includes a new “Just In Time” performance Java compiler (Falcon). Java is much faster than scripted languages like Python when using a state-of-the-art compiler. The business benefits of this include: fewer engineering hours required to achieve desired performance, consistency and scale; lower operating costs from a reduced memory footprint; better, more consistent customer experience; better application service levels with reduced latency and fewer timeouts. Azul Platform Prime also offers a Cloud Native Compiler that offloads JIT compilation to the cloud, which further improves performance and cost efficiency.
- Azul Platform Prime also addresses the Java garbage collection problem. Java pauses in order for the Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) to free up memory automatically. This is a good thing and often the pause is unnoticeable but can last seconds or even minutes as you scale up. Azul’s Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector (C4) is the only production-ready, generational pauseless garbage collector available in Java. It has been available since 2010 and is used by many Fortune 500 companies.
- Java can have a warm-up issue while it decides which parts of the code are used most and just-in-time compiles and optimises them. Conversely, if the application processing profile changes, Java can revert to de-optimised interpreted code, while it compiles new modules. Java starts fast and gets faster – but in some applications (such as Capital Markets) you need the application to start up fully optimised – as fast as possible – from the get go. Azul Platform Prime includes ReadyNow!, which allows operations teams to save and reuse accumulated optimization profiles across runs; and also provides a robust set of APIs and compiler directives that give developers more control over the timing and impact of JVM de-optimisation.
Fig 2 - How Azul Vulnerability Detection works
The Azul Platform also includes a new SaaS product released in November 2022 called Azul Vulnerability Detection, which maintains a knowledge base containing “fingerprints” of known vulnerabilities found in the NIST National Vulnerability Database and compares this to fingerprints of code actually processed by Azul JVMs. Not only is this a backstop against careless coding practices (if you find known vulnerabilities, you should not only remove them but also check for flaws in your development processes) but also a protection against new vulnerabilities that have only just been identified. Azul Vulnerability Detection is agentless, and runs continually, against production Java.
Azul also provides commercial levels of support, with training, webinars, discussion papers etc. all available. Long Term Support (LTS) based on 8+2 year product lifecycle model. All in all, Azul support ensures that your developers are part of a supportive community that contributes to security, user experience, developer morale – and code quality.