Intelligence cloud lands from Azul

Azul announced Azul Intelligence Cloud, a new family of products that apply cloud resources to analyze and optimize Java fleets and provide actionable intelligence. Intelligence Cloud’s first offering, Cloud Native Compiler, brings elasticity to Java JIT compilation, enhancing the performance of Java applications in any computing environment, including microservices-based and cloud-native applications.

Azul Intelligence cloud lands

Azul Intelligence Cloud applies the full power of customers’ cloud infrastructure toward optimizing execution and gaining cost efficiencies. The heavy lifting of compiling byte code to optimized machine code is separated from the actual running of Java applications. Compilation and optimization are performed by Cloud Native Compiler using abundant and elastic cloud resources. This results in faster code and better performance while using fewer computing resources, thus optimizing cloud costs and delivering greater agility in the face of mushrooming infrastructure spending.

By some estimates, over $500B of market value is weighed down due to rampant cloud costs. Separately, Gartner has stated "Organizations with little or no cloud cost optimization plans rush into cloud technology investments. They end up overspending on cloud services by up to 70% without deriving the expected value from it," (Gartner, Realize Cost Savings After Migrating to the Cloud, Finance Research Team, April 28, 2021.2).

"Azul Intelligence Cloud helps IT and application leaders deliver on a seemingly paradoxical set of priorities: deliver innovative cloud-based applications while also decreasing infrastructure costs in a business environment where improving margins is often a matter of survival. Azul offers customers faster performance using fewer compute resources, delivering up to 50 percent reduction on their infrastructure spending. We do this not by changing their application code or by adding servers, but by optimizing the underlying infrastructure that runs their applications," said Scott Sellers, CEO, and co-founder, Azul.

Cloud-Native Compilation in Azul Intelligence Cloud and Azul Platform Prime

Until now, production Java runtimes have operated with a pre-cloud mindset: as isolated, self-reliant units constrained to local resources and limited compute capacity and analytical capabilities. Cloud-Native Compiler introduces a cloud-centric approach that decouples Just in Time (JIT) compilation from the Java Virtual Machine (JVM); it is compatible with all Java applications and retains the full advantages of JIT compilation.

Cloud-Native Compiler works in conjunction with Platform Prime, Azul’s flagship, highly performant Java runtime. Cloud-Native Compiler elastically scales up and down, and reuses previously optimized compilations across JVMs, to improve the performance and startup times for all JVMs to which it connects.

"Performing compilation outside of the JVM using cloud resources is both a major innovation and a valuable new approach for running Java-based applications and infrastructure. Most companies today are grappling with how to drive their business using cloud resources while at the same time keeping infrastructure costs low. We already rely on Azul Platform Prime, and now Azul Intelligence Cloud with cloud-native compilation offers another powerful tool for meeting that challenge," said Ariel Pisetzky, Vice President of IT & Cyber, Taboola.

Tapping into the power of the cloud to perform optimization work delivers many benefits:

• Powerful Optimizations at Dramatically Reduced Cost: Shifting JIT compilation to cloud resources makes more powerful optimizations both practical and affordable, enabling faster and more efficient code across customers' Java fleets.
   
• Improve Application Performance: Boosts the efficiency, throughput, and responsiveness of a wide range of applications including front end, back end, API gateways, containerized applications, and microservices, as well as JVM-based languages such as Java, Scala, Kotlin, Clojure, Apache Groovy and JRuby, among others.
   
• Improve Performance of JVM-Based Infrastructure Workloads: Cloud-Native Compiler is proven to dramatically improve the performance of popular infrastructure software such as big data and DBMS (Apache Cassandra), enterprise search (Apache Solr, Elasticsearch), and event stream processing (Apache Kafka).
   
• Avoid Wasteful Overprovisioning: By rightsizing instances, customers no longer bear the ongoing cost of resources that are only used for a tiny fraction of an instance’s lifecycle. With Cloud Native Compiler, JVMs offload the heavy work of compilation to a scalable, dedicated service that allows customers to serve the same load with smaller client servers.
   
• Rapid Warmup to Full-Speed Operation: Cloud-Native Compiler lets containers reach faster top-line performance quicker than ever before. With containerized JVM workloads, modern CI/CD practices, and elastic autoscaling, customers are frequently restarting their JVM, increasing the importance of fast startups.
   

Cloud-Native Compiler is being offered at no additional charge to Azul Platform Prime customers as a customer-managed product.