Azul has announced that some of its Java products are now available on the AWS and Google marketplaces. The products available include Azul Platform Core and Azul Platform Prime, which are Java development and runtime platforms.
George Gould, senior vice president, corporate development and partner alliances at Azul, said, “Making Azul products available on the AWS and Google Cloud marketplaces unlocks tremendous purchasing efficiencies for businesses deploying their Java applications in the cloud.
“By working together with the hyperscalers and preferred channel partners, we’re providing our customers additional ways to procure our products and optimize their cloud spending.”
Delivering an alternative to Oracle Java SE
Over the last few years, Oracle has consistently raised the price of its Java products. For many organisations, that leaves them with a dilemma – pay or look for an alternative. Changing products is normally fraught with danger, which is seen as a drag on alternatives to Oracle.
Azul says this is not the case with its products. In the announcement, it says, “With Platform Core, customers receive secure and stable builds of OpenJDK – a drop-in replacement for Oracle Java SE – that includes the world’s best 24/7 support and is typically 70% less expensive than Oracle.
“Azul Platform Prime is a superior Java development and runtime platform that optimizes the performance, scalability, and responsiveness of an organization’s Java applications and services, and cuts infrastructure and cloud costs by up to 50%.”
Azul calls out three reasons why buying its products through the AWS and Google Cloud marketplaces.
- Leveraging Committed Cloud Spend: Customers often have cloud commitments with the hyperscalers that they would like to apply toward procuring other cloud-related products, as well as discounts and incentives that kick in at designated levels of spending. With the addition of Azul to these marketplaces, committed spend can now be used to procure Azul products.
- Consolidating Software Spend: Azul products available on the marketplace enable companies to further consolidate third-party software purchases to increase their total cloud spend and participate in larger program discounts.
- Simplifying Procurement: Azul products purchased on these marketplaces are procured using standardized marketplace agreements which are already in use by the customer.
Channel Partners get special access on AWS
The deal with AWS will deliver additional benefits for Azul partners. They get access to Amazon’s Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPO) program. Using the AWS Marketplace Private Offers, partners can offer Azul products to customers.
The CPPO sees AWS acting as a wholesaler. Partners get Platform Core and Platform Prime at a wholesale price. However, the relationship with the end customer stays with them, despite the sale taking place via the AWS Marketplace. That is key for many channel partners who seek to offer additional services beyond the product. As such, they want to have control over the contractual relationship with the customer.
Erling Hesselberg, vice president of Enterprise Software at Crayon, said, “As an Azul partner with a robust FinOps practice focused on managing and optimizing our customer’s cloud spend, we see this as a key opportunity to leverage the CPPO program options to help facilitate the ease of purchasing Azul’s products.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Gaining access to the AWS and Google marketplaces for Platform Core and Platform Prime is a significant step by Azul. It will increase the visibility of its products at a time when more and more Oracle customers are prepared to look elsewhere.
More importantly, access to the AWS CPPO program will reassure Azul’s partner network that they are not being sidelined or likely to see less business. If anything, it gives them a major marketing opportunity for free. It will be interesting to see if that also brings in new partners.
The Java market has always been interesting to watch. There is nothing to stop people from taking the open-source core product and doing everything they need with it. Of course, nothing assumes there is no technical or skills barrier and that everyone has time to develop their own solution.
The reality is that enterprises and governments like the idea of curated products, but only if the price is right. Will this announcement see Azul take an even larger share of the Oracle Java market?
