Organisations in Southeast Asia have been concerned about the cost of using Java software – one of the digital world’s key building blocks today – and are looking for open-source alternatives, according to a study released recently.
Last year, Oracle started charging a license fee for every employee in an organisation – whether they actually use its version of Java – Oracle Java SE.
The move has raised the alarm in many organisations, especially large ones with thousands of employees that could incur costs in the millions of dollars for a software that was free until 2019.
Unsurprisingly, in Southeast Asia, more than half of organisations (52 per cent) surveyed by Java vendor Azul this year have said they were concerned with the cost of the software.
The proportion in the region is higher than the global number (42 per cent), which could point to the price sensitivity of the region’s organisations.
Notably, when considering a move from Oracle Java to a non-Oracle version, more Southeast Asia organisations bring up factors such as cost, preference for open-source software and restrictive Oracle policies than their global counterparts.
Globally, organisations have balked at the costs imposed by Oracle, with 82 per cent being uneasy at its cost model. More are jumping ship to use Oracle Java alternatives, up from 72 per cent in 2023 to 88 per cent today, according to the Azul study of 2,000 Java professionals.
Azul, which offers a cheaper open-source version of Java with professional support and matching application compatibility, naturally wishes to paint a grim picture for its rival Oracle.
That said, independent industry analysts have also warned of growing risks if organisations don’t prepare for an audit by Oracle that could force them to pay millions of dollars in fees they haven’t budgeted for.
Many businesses have to look for help to switch over to OpenJDK Java because it is important to get the migration right and not impact any critical apps, said Dean Vaughan, Azul’s vice-president for Asia-Pacific.
For organisations in highly regulated industries, such as banks, the risk of downtime caused by switching over is not something they can afford, he noted.
Increasingly, he noted, many organisations in Southeast Asia are also looking to make their Java run more effectively, by moving to a more optimised version that helps them manage the rising costs of cloud services.
Here, organisations in Southeast Asia seem to be taking the lead, with 45 per cent having turned to a high-performance Java version to address high cloud costs. This is higher than the global proportion of 24 per cent, according to the Azul survey.
What these Southeast Asian organisations have to do is better manage the security risks associated with Java. Worryingly, 62 per cent of them still face issues with the Log4j vulnerabilities discovered in 2021. This is higher than the global proportion of 49 percent.
