As Indian enterprises increasingly move away from Oracle Java, driven by rising costs, rigid licensing, and the demand for enhanced performance, Azul is poised to capitalise on this shift. With 93% of businesses exploring Java alternatives, Scott Sellers, President, CEO, and Co-founder, and Dean Vaughan, Vice President of Asia Pacific at Azul, discuss how their high-performance Java platform is optimised for cloud environments, cloud-native applications, AI, and DevOps, offering businesses greater flexibility, security, and scalability.
In India, Azul is focused on expanding its partner ecosystem, investing in local talent, and strengthening customer relationships. Vaughan highlights the critical role of partnerships, like with Lenovo, to provide a complete, optimised Java solution in a competitive ecosystem. Azul’s partner programmes are enabling resellers and integrators to support enterprise modernisation.
In a revealing conversation, Sellers explains that the move away from Oracle Java isn’t just about cost- it’s about empowering businesses to innovate at scale. Looking ahead to 2025-2026, Azul is focusing on expanding in Asia Pacific, driving adoption of cloud-native architectures, and addressing the specific needs of India’s fast-evolving sectors, including fintech, telecom, and retail.
With 93% of Indian companies seeking alternatives to Oracle Java, what are the largest drivers of this transition, and how is Azul best poised to take advantage of this trend?
Scott Sellers: The move away from Oracle Java is motivated by a number of factors, mainly cost considerations, the need for more flexible licensing options, and increasing demands for increased performance and security. We are uniquely positioned to capitalise on this trend due to our high-performance Java platform, which is fully optimised for cloud environments and provides enterprises with the flexibility to scale as they adopt newer technologies like AI and DevOps. Our focus on performance, security, and cost efficiency resonates strongly with Indian enterprises, especially as they seek to innovate at scale.
Cloud optimisation, AI adoption, and DevOps are transforming enterprise IT. How is Azul’s technology facilitating faster innovation and improved performance in these key areas?
Scott Sellers: Our technology is designed to meet the current needs of cloud optimisation, AI, and DevOps. With our Zing JVM and Platform, we offer enterprises outstanding performance, especially for latency-sensitive and highly concurrent workloads. For cloud optimisation, our solutions minimise resource utilisation and maximise throughput, which is essential for economical scaling. For AI and machine learning, our JVM performance advantages lower the time taken to train and deploy models. Also, our DevOps emphasis brings pre-integration into CI/CD pipelines, which allows companies to attain speedier innovation cycles and operational efficiencies.
Dean, would you walk us through Azul’s strategy for India? What are your long-term investment plans, and how do you see the Indian market propel Azul’s global growth?
Dean Vaughan: India is a top priority for us, and we are investing for the long term in the region. We view India as a fast-emerging market with huge potential across cloud adoption, enterprise modernisation, and digital transformation. Our strategy for India includes deepening our partner base, investing in regional talent, and fortifying our customer relationships. We also intend to localise our solutions even further to address Indian businesses’ particular requirements. The Indian market will be instrumental in fuelling our international growth, especially as more companies here adopt Java alternatives and new-age IT infrastructure, towards our overall success in Asia Pacific and globally.
What is your India-specific GTM (Go-To-Market) approach, and how are you engaging with key partners such as Lenovo to develop a strong value proposition within an increasingly competitive Java environment?
Scott Sellers: Our India-specific GTM approach is all about establishing solid relationships with regional enterprises and partners. We’re focusing on understanding the unique needs of Indian businesses and providing them with Java solutions that not only deliver performance and cost-efficiency but also support their broader cloud, AI, and DevOps objectives. Working with key partners like Lenovo is an important part of this strategy. Lenovo’s extensive presence in India and their enterprise hardware expertise complements our software solutions, allowing us to provide a comprehensive and highly optimised Java ecosystem to customers. Together, we can provide a strong value proposition that enables businesses to modernise and innovate at a faster pace.
Dean Vaughan: Adding to that, we’re also working on building stronger relationships with local system integrators and resellers, which will enable us to penetrate the market more efficiently. Our partnership with Lenovo and other technology partners allows us to provide end-to-end solutions, driving performance as well as value for our Indian customers.
Can you speak about your partner programs in India? How are you empowering system integrators, resellers, and technology partners to scale with you and assist enterprise modernisation initiatives?
Scott Sellers: Our Indian partner programs are created to empower system integrators, resellers, and technology partners with the tools and support they require to effectively deploy our solutions to enterprises. We provide our partners with thorough training, technical support, and marketing materials to facilitate their ability to sell and implement our technologies successfully. Through collaborative work with our partners, we empower them to be the force behind enterprise modernisation, making it possible for businesses to streamline their Java environments and shift towards cloud-native architecture without disruptions.
Dean Vaughan: We’ve also built a robust partner ecosystem in India, with an aim to empower our partners to utilise our high-performance Java offerings to assist customers in their digital transformation initiatives. From joint marketing campaigns, joint sales incentives, or technical enablement, we ensure our partners are well-placed to meet the increasing demands of the Indian market.
What are your top areas of priority and focus areas for 2025 and 2026- globally and in India, specifically. Where do you think the greatest opportunities and challenges lie ahead?
Scott Sellers: Globally, our priorities for 2025 and 2026 will be to continue building out our presence in the major regions around the world such as Asia Pacific, continuing to develop our Java platform, and extending our cloud and AI capabilities. We have tremendous opportunities in cloud-native architectures, as businesses migrate to more scalable and agile environments. For India in particular, we anticipate ongoing growth in the adoption of cloud and Java alternative technologies. The largest opportunities are in collaboration with businesses in fintech, telecommunications, and retail, where digital transformation is accelerating. The hurdles, though, will be in managing a competitive and rapidly changing market, but our strategic bets on local partnerships, people, and customer relationships will see us through those.
Dean Vaughan: In India, the emphasis will be on growing our partner ecosystem, accelerating the adoption of our solutions in the cloud, and driving deeper engagements with key enterprise customers. We’re also intent on raising awareness of the value of Azul’s performance-oriented approach to Java. As Indian businesses continue to get modernised, the ability to show the real value of our solutions in terms of performance as well as cost will be key. The challenge, naturally, will be the growing competition within the Java space, but with our compelling value proposition and partnerships, we believe we can win.
Dean, you said that you are collaborating closely with your partners in India. How do you see the Indian market evolving in terms of cloud adoption, and what role do you see Azul playing in this evolution?
Dean Vaughan: The Indian market is rapidly evolving, particularly in terms of cloud adoption. With increasing digital transformation initiatives, businesses in India are moving towards hybrid and multi-cloud strategies to optimise costs, enhance agility, and drive innovation. We play a crucial role in this evolution by offering performance and scalability that helps enterprises to fully leverage their cloud investments. Our cloud-optimised Java platform supports businesses as they adopt and scale their cloud infrastructure, ensuring they can achieve maximum performance at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional solutions.
