Download a PDF of this article
[The following is an excerpt from “Java and the art of driving digital transformation,” a 2021 paper from Omdia. You can download the full paper here. –Ed.]
Enterprise consumers of open source software are increasingly turning to third-party providers of support services to help them more rapidly innovate while also maintaining secure and sturdy operations.
By subscribing to an enterprise support subscription for platforms based on open source like OpenJDK, companies are in essence combining the best aspects of both proprietary and open source software into one solution.
On the surface, this may sound counterintuitive. For a programming language like Java, what if anything is there to support beyond platform compatibility for the Java JVM?
Of course, this kind of traditional phone/email engineering support and timely access to critical security patches are crucial for any enterprise-class deployment. But there are many more subtle reasons that make commercial support itself a crucial investment, particularly for enterprises with a long-term investment in an open source language like Java.
◉ Direct access to major technology releases
◉ Global, multi-lingual 24/7/365 technical support services
◉ Access to expert practitioner communities
◉ Service ticket response with service level agreements
◉ Accelerated, early access to critical performance, stability, and security updates
◉ Access to regulatory, licensing, and other legal updates
◉ Continued support for software releases past the end of public updates
◉ Software compliance, monitoring, and management software
◉ Upgraded tools, utilities, and scripts
◉ Third-party product compatibility certification
◉ Premier access to consultative services
◉ Performance tuning and license optimization advisory services
◉ Exclusive entitlements such as Java Management Service and GraalVM Enterprise
In evaluating Oracle’s own Java subscription offering, Oracle Java SE Subscription, several key benefits surface.
Inclusive and mature support services. In supporting more than 430,000 global customers, Oracle has built up substantial engineering expertise, which flows to its Java SE subscription customer experience in the form of 24/7/365 access to Java experts with more than 15 years of experience and the ability to converse in more than 27 languages from within the company’s Premier Support team.
Subscribers not only gain access to Java expertise but also access to critical bug fixes well before they reach the broader public. And this support extends beyond basic support issue resolution to include performance tuning and monitoring, security baseline and compliance services, and deployment mode evolution.
Improved application management. Included in the Java SE Subscription and Java SE Desktop Subscription, as well incorporated as a free native service within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle’s new Java Management Service (JMS) provides a single pane of glass through which enterprises can discover all Java assets including Java Development Kit (JDK), Java Runtime Environment (JRE), and GraalVM—whether those assets are running on cloud, on-premises, or within a third-party cloud service.
At a glance, JMS users view the current version, originating vendor (e.g. Oracle), type of runtime, status, and most importantly for Oracle-provided runtimes, if they are above or below the security baseline. For large, complex deployments, in a future release JMS will be able to act as an early warning system, helping customers head off often unforeseen issues such as an imminent expiration of security certificates.
Flexible modernization. Customers can confidently remain with the version of Java used in creating a particular project, migrating to a newer version according to their schedule rather than that of the language. This is crucial for companies that maintain more than one version of Java.
For Java SE Subscription, this is best demonstrated within long term support (LTS) releases, which are now updated every two years (prior to Q3, 2021, this cycle stood at every three years). With an LTS release, customers can stay on the same version longer (Oracle releases new versions of Java every six months) and patch intermittently, at their own schedule before upgrading to the next LTS release. This term-based licensing mechanism lets enterprise practitioners completely control their upgrade path.
Taking this a step further, Oracle’s recently introduced Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions (NFTC) license enables developers to freely use Oracle JDK beginning with version 17, even in production and commercially so long as there’s no associated fee for redistribution. This lets developers standardize on Oracle’s enterprise-grade implementation of Java, moving freely between six-month releases and two-year LTS updates.
Long-term risk mitigation. Maintaining code that’s no longer supported with hot fixes and security patches not only creates technical debt, it also opens up companies to potential security risks.
Recognizing that companies often need to continue running on older versions of Java, Oracle Java SE Subscription offers extended support for older, popular versions of Java extending back to version 8 (released in 2014 but available for extended support through 2030) and Java 11 (released in 2016 and available for extended support through 2026). With these options, Oracle can create a consistent support baseline for code written over multiple decades.
This ability to go fast (incorporate new features every six months) or go slow (hold onto a given release for anywhere between two and eight years) is of crucial importance to heavily regulated companies within financial, healthcare, and public sector markets, where it is particularly difficult to balance the pressure to innovate with the need to mitigate risk.
Source: oracle.com
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment