Oracle Java pricing concerns could spark a developer exodus

A growing number of Oracle Java users are considering switching to another provider, new research shows, as cost concerns are driving developers towards open source options.

A new survey of over 2,000 Java professionals commissioned by Azul found 88% of respondents were considering switching to another Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or Java Development Kit (JDK).

This marks an increase on the 72% of Oracle Java users who said they were thinking about transitioning away from the platform in 2023, with 42% citing cost as their primary concern.

Since Oracle shifted to an employee-based pricing model in January 2023, 82% of business users have expressed some level of concern over its approach, the report found.

Just over two fifths of these users stated they were either ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned, with this figure rising to 55% when restricted to Java 17 users.

Oracle ended free commercial support for Java 17 in October 2024, leaving users having to opt between paying Oracle to continue to use the platform and receive support, upgrade to Java 21, replace Java with another language, or opt to migrate to an alternative JDK.

The second most common reason professionals gave for considering the switch was a preference for open source options, cited by 40% of respondents.

Moreover, 46% of the companies considering the switch identified free OpenJDK releases paired with paid support services as the preferred alternative to Oracle.

Oracle Java customers also noted the firm’s sales tactics (37%), restrictive policies (33%), and audit risk (32%), as additional worries that were driving their potential migration away from the platform.

Java remains a top enterprise choice for cloud and AI

Despite cost concerns, Java remains an integral programming language for a vast number of organizations due to its cross platform and backward compatibility, stability, and efficacy in enterprise-level applications.

Azul noted that only 1% of potential survey participants around the world were disqualified due to the fact they didn’t use Java, “a testament to the language’s ubiquity in modern development environments.”

For example, almost 70% of respondents said that at least half of their enterprise applications were either built with Java or run on a JVM.

In the AI arena, 50% of respondents who build AI workloads use Java over other popular languages like Python, despite the latter’s reputation as a preferred language for developing AI applications.

Azul said the growing adoption of cloud services is only further fueling uptake of the language, with just under two-thirds of organizations using Java in the cloud stating 50% of their compute costs originate from Java systems.

The report also found underutilization of cloud compute capacity remains a problem for enterprises. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of respondents said more than 20% of their cloud compute capacity is unused.

This presents a serious problem as cloud expenses continue to rise, with 38% of survey participants stating their organization has established new internal rules for cloud asset management to reduce this inefficiency.

Additionally, when asked why they use a high-performance JDK, 61% of respondents said they used it in order to optimize their cloud compute costs.