The more things change, the more they stay the same. There’s some truth in that truism, and the launch of “the New Azul” last month is a perfect example. We have a new logo, new product names, and a new platform, but our focus remains the same even through this major rebranding effort because it is the core of who we are: 100% Java since the day we were born in 2002. And the foundation of our products, and now our platform, stays the same as well: OpenJDK. Which has gone by the product name of “Zulu”.
We recognize the valuable equity that we’ve earned in the Zulu name all these years, especially in the open source community, so we’re leveraging it as a core component of our new Azul Platform offerings. Customers still love our Zulu brand. And so do we.
That’s why, to preserve the brand equity we’ve built with our support of OpenJDK as well as via the millions of Zulu downloads every month, we’ve kept continuity with the Zulu name when referring to our builds of OpenJDK. At the base of the Azul Platform is Azul Zulu Builds of OpenJDK, roughly 8+ million lines of code, which we curate, test, and certify to provide developers and customers the most complete, dependable, and secure builds of OpenJDK. Some Zulu Builds of OpenJDK are made freely available by Azul and are downloaded and used by the broad Java community. Azul has the longest track record of anyone, commercial or otherwise, of consistently and reliably delivering updated builds of OpenJDK and making them readily available to the community and to the world’s largest open source repositories and CI/CD environments, including, for example, GitHub Actions. We take immense pride in delivering timely access to security updates to protect Java applications from malicious attacks, and ensure users can access the latest features and versions safely, consistently, and with confidence.
In addition to the world’s #1 supported builds of OpenJDK, the Azul Platform also includes other essential components needed to successfully manage Java applications, such as Azul Mission Control, Java Flight Recorder, and Azul Commercial Compatibility Kit, as well as Azul’s world-famous engineering support. So, in the new Azul Platform, Zulu Enterprise and Zulu Embedded become Azul Platform Core and Zing becomes Azul Platform Prime—two flavors of the same platform; two levels of power and performance and control—both built on Azul Zulu Builds of OpenJDK.
Thus, we wanted our new branding to maintain and emphasize what customers love most about Azul: the best OpenJDK combined with the best engineering support and the lowest costs.
“Azul delivers a compelling package that combines certified, tested, multi-platform, open source builds of Java with Premium or Platinum support which is significantly cheaper than Oracle Java SE subscriptions,” says Leonardo Lima, Chief Architect and Founder for TechStone.
And this isn’t just branding for branding’s sake; it has immediate impact on the performance and cost of a company’s entire Java estate: “Azul was a drop-in replacement and migration has taken less than three months,” says Michael Thalhammer, Head of Software Development at Commend International GmbH. “Had we known how seamlessly and smooth the process would be, we would have switched from Oracle Java to Azul much earlier on.”
So that was our thinking. We wanted our new branding to express both our heritage and 100% focus and deep expertise on Java and OpenJDK, as well as our future as the leading platform for running all Java applications with the best performance and lowest cost. Did we succeed?
