Newcastle City Council has turned to Java platform specialist Azul to overhaul its Java estate five years after Oracle pulled free support for older versions of the almost 30-year-old programming language.
Oracle inherited stewardship of Java when it took over the carcass of one-time internet pioneer Sun Microsystems in 2010.
Larry Ellison’s firm overhauled licensing and support for Java 8 in 2019, ending access to free security updates for customers like Newcastle. This represented a growing security threat for the council, whose Java-based systems are used by around 1000 employees a day. At the same time, a full migration away from Java was not feasible, due to the likely cost and disruption.
The council’s tech team opted to switch to Azul Platform Core, which is based on OpenJDK, an open source alternative originated by Sun in 2007.
In a statement, Azul said the agreement meant “NCC received a one-for-one equivalent to a commercial support subscription from Oracle, including Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) that allowed IT to immediately deploy security fixes in production.”
Moreover, because Azul supports multiple generations of Java, including 6 and 7, “the council could continue to safely use its older versions of Java without needing to upgrade to newer releases.” And it ensured Newcastle met its Public Service Network obligations.
In a statement, Jenny Nelson, the council’s head of ICT & Digital, said “Our Java estate is now consistent, standardised, easier to maintain, and has brought a level of simplicity that’s a huge benefit to our organisation.”
Azul’s EMEA VP, James Johnston, claimed the transition had helped eliminate “over 80%” of the council’s security risks.
While the deal addresses immediate Java security issues, and removes the need for an imminent migration, it doesn’t eliminate the longer term question facing Newcastle and other Java users, of what to do in the longterm.
Research by Azul says that 86% users are migrating some or all of their installations off Oracle Java, with two third citing price as a motivation. Oracle has a famously hard-nosed approach to licensing.
However, price along doesn’t ensure a language’s future in the long-term.
In 2017, Java was the second most popular language according to dev analysts RedMonk. But it has been in third place for a while now, replaced by the data-science friendly Python.
The TIOBE August rankings put Python at the top of the tree, with Java in fourth place, behind C++ and C. “Python’s hegemony is undeniable,” TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen said, and was on track to become the most popular language ever.
But no one stays top of the charts forever. How much Pascal or Cobol have you written recently?
