Java is increasingly being positioned as a core language for enterprise AI development, even as organizations accelerate plans to move away from Oracle Java due to pricing and licensing concerns, according to Azul’s newly released 2026 State of Java Survey & Report.
The annual study is based on responses from more than 2,000 Java professionals worldwide and highlights how Java’s role is evolving as enterprises shift AI initiatives from experimentation to production.
Enterprises turn to Java to scale AI in production
The survey found that 62 percent of organizations now use Java to code AI functionality, up from 50 percent in 2025.
Respondents cited Java’s reliability, performance, and security as key reasons it remains central to AI-enabled enterprise applications, particularly when integrating machine learning models into existing systems.
More than three in ten respondents (31 percent) said over half of the Java applications they build now include AI functionality. That trend is supported by a growing ecosystem of Java-compatible AI frameworks, including JavaML and the Deep Java Library (DJL).
Looking ahead, survey participants identified the following as the most important capabilities for Java to remain competitive in AI-driven development environments:
- long-term support for modern Java versions
- built-in security features
- observability
- large data access
- integration with large language models
Oracle Java migration gains momentum amid pricing concerns
Concerns over Oracle’s employee-based Java pricing model, introduced in 2023, continue to intensify.
Azul’s report found that 92 percent of respondents are concerned about Oracle Java pricing and licensing, while just 7 percent said they are not concerned at all, nearly half the level reported last year.
As a result, migration away from Oracle Java is accelerating. Eighty-one percent of respondents said they have migrated, are migrating, or plan to migrate at least part of their Java workloads to a non-Oracle OpenJDK distribution. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) intend to migrate their entire Java estate.
Cost was cited as the top driver for migration, followed by a preference for open source, uncertainty caused by frequent licensing changes, and audit risk.
Notably, 21 percent of respondents said their organizations have already undergone an Oracle Java audit.
Java performance tied to cloud cost optimization efforts
Cloud cost control remains a major priority for Java-heavy organizations.
The survey found that 97 percent of respondents have taken steps to reduce public cloud spending, with 41 percent citing the use of a high-performance Java platform as a key strategy.
Despite these efforts, inefficiencies persist. 74 percent of organizations reported more than 20 percent of compute capacity unused in public cloud environments, often due to overprovisioning to offset inconsistent runtime behavior or slow startup and warm-up times.
Among organizations where at least 90 percent of applications run on Java, adoption of high-performance Java platforms rose sharply, from 61 percent overall to 81 percent in this group.
Dead code and CVE noise continue to drain productivity
The report also points to ongoing DevOps challenges tied to dead or unused code and security alert fatigue.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said dead code negatively affects productivity, while 56 percent reported dealing with Java-related CVEs daily or weekly, up significantly from 2025.
Nearly a third of respondents said their teams spend more than half their time chasing false-positive vulnerability alerts, often tied to code paths that never run in production.
The channel angle: what the results mean for MSPs and other partners
For managed service providers and channel partners, the findings underscore a shifting set of priorities they will need to address in customer environments over the next 12 to 24 months.
As more enterprises embed AI functionality into existing Java applications, MSPs are likely to see increased demand for skills around Java-based AI integration, performance tuning, and production support rather than greenfield AI development.
At the same time, the accelerating migration away from Oracle Java creates both risks and opportunities for the channel, as partners are increasingly being drawn into license audits, cost assessments, and OpenJDK migration projects.
Combined with ongoing pressure to optimize cloud spend and reduce security noise, the survey suggests that Java is becoming less of a “legacy” workload and more of a strategic platform on which MSPs can deliver higher-value advisory, modernization, and optimization services.
Those market trends are likely why Azul reported strong growth in its own channel ecosystem in 2025 and opened the new year with plans for expansion.