Independent Study Finds Organizations Achieved 129% ROI with Azul Prime

Total Economic Impact™ study shows significant cloud cost reductions, infrastructure savings and engineering productivity gains

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Azul, the trusted leader in enterprise Java for today’s AI and cloud-first world, today announced the results of a new Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study, which found that organizations using Azul Prime achieved a 129% return on investment (ROI) and a net present value (NPV)¹ of $5.7 million over three years.

The study, commissioned by Azul and conducted by Forrester Consulting, examined the potential financial impact of Prime by interviewing six organizations with experience using the company’s high-performance Java platform. Forrester aggregated the results into a composite organization running 550 Java applications of which 80% run in the cloud and 20% on-premises in data centers. The composite IT team includes 2,200 developers and 35 performance engineers dedicated to Java Virtual Machine (JVM) maintenance.

Measurable Financial Outcomes and Rapid Payback

According to the study, the composite organization realized $10.2 million in risk-adjusted benefits over three years compared with $4.4 million in costs, resulting in a payback period of less than six months. Key financial metrics include:

• 129% ROI
• $5.7 million NPV
• $10.2 million total present value (PV)² of benefits
• Payback in under six months

Significant Reductions in Cloud and Infrastructure Costs

The Forrester study found that improved Java performance enabled organizations to run workloads more efficiently, directly reducing the number of compute instances required and thereby reducing cloud and infrastructure spend. When running Java applications on Prime, it optimizes performance and reduces CPU utilization and latency spikes, which means that fewer resources are needed to process the same workload. After interviewees’ organizations began migrating their Java applications and services to Prime, they saw a reduction in cloud costs, ranging from 7% to 50%, depending on workload type and environment.

“We used to reserve roughly 20% to 30% of CPU capacity to guard against unpredictable JVM behavior. That extra buffer was necessary just to be safe. But with the move to Azul Prime, we’ve been able to cut a lot of that reserved CPU capacity, which is a pretty meaningful gain,” chief information officer, financial services firm.

Additional quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

• Nearly $4 million in cloud compute cost savings over three years, driven by lower CPU utilization and fewer required instances.
• $523K in on-premises data center infrastructure savings, resulting from reduced server requirements.

“By using Azul Prime in our private cloud, we’ve been able to reduce costs by about 3x. Its low latency JVM lets us pack up to three times more customers onto the same machine compared to before, which makes a big difference in efficiency and scalability,” senior manager, Performance, Resilience & Scalability, cloud software provider.

Engineering Productivity Gains Drive Additional Value

Beyond infrastructure savings, the study found that more stable and predictable Java performance significantly reduced the operational burden on performance engineering teams. Before implementing Prime, performance engineers spent a significant amount of time handling application performance issues and outages. This included mitigating garbage collection (GC)-related disruptions, managing performance volatility and conducting manual runtime tuning. After implementing Prime, the Java performance was more stable and predictable, resulting in fewer alerts and less time spent troubleshooting and performance tuning.

As a result, the composite organization achieved:

• $5.7 million in productivity gains from reallocating performance engineer FTEs to higher-value work.
• Improved operational stability and more consistent application performance at scale.

“We had 30 to 40 engineers spending about 50% of their time each week just dealing with JVM operational issues. Now JVM maintenance is handled by a single dedicated team, and it doesn’t take much time. Just two engineers manage JVM issues across all services and they don’t even spend all their time on it,” senior manager, Performance, Resilience & Scalability, cloud software provider.

Additional Unquantified Benefits

While not included in the financial model, Forrester identified several additional benefits reported by interviewees, including:

• Improved customer experience due to faster transactions, lower latency and smoother application behavior.
• Greater predictability in application performance during peak demand.
• Potential licensing savings for organizations that migrate off prior paid JDKs such as Oracle Java to Azul Prime and Azul Core.

Some interviewees also noted the flexibility to redeploy their substantial cost savings to other areas of the business as another benefit of moving to Azul Prime.

“We believe this independent study by Forrester validates what our customers are consistently telling us about their production environments: improving Java performance is one of the most effective and often overlooked ways to reduce cloud costs at scale,” said Scott Sellers, co-founder and CEO of Azul. “By addressing JVM efficiency directly, organizations can achieve meaningful infrastructure and cloud cost savings, improve performance consistency and application SLAs, and free engineering teams to focus on higher-value innovation.”

For more information:

• Download the free Forrester study: The Total Economic Impact™ of Azul Prime.
• Azul Prime
• Register to attend a webinar with Forrester Consulting on March 25 to discuss overall cloud cost management trends and the study results.

FAQs

What is the most effective way to reduce Java cloud costs?

While most cloud cost optimization strategies only focus on instance right-sizing, reserved pricing, and FinOps tooling, one of the most effective and often overlooked approaches is optimizing Java runtime performance at the JVM level. A 2026 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Azul found that organizations using Azul Prime achieved cloud cost reductions ranging from 7% to 50% depending on workload type, driven by lower CPU utilization and fewer required compute instances. Many enterprises reserve 20% to 30% of CPU capacity just to buffer against unpredictable JVM behavior, using capacity that can be reclaimed with a more efficient runtime. The study found that the composite organization realized nearly $4 million in cloud compute savings over three years.

How can engineering teams reduce time spent on JVM performance issues?

JVM-related performance issues, including garbage collection disruptions, latency spikes and manual runtime tuning, can consume a significant share of engineering capacity. A 2026 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Azul found that before adopting Azul Prime, organizations had 30 to 40 engineers spending roughly half their time each week managing JVM operational issues. After implementation, JVM maintenance was handled by as few as two dedicated engineers who didn't spend all their time on it. The composite organization in the study achieved $5.7 million in productivity gains over three years by reallocating performance engineering resources to higher-value work.

How long does it take to see ROI from optimizing Java performance?

A 2026 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Azul found that a composite organization representative of interviewed customers using Azul Prime achieved payback in less than six months, with benefits compounding over a three-year period. Beyond direct infrastructure savings, organizations reported improved customer experience through faster transactions and lower latency, more predictable application performance during peak demand, and the flexibility to redeploy substantial cost savings to other strategic areas of the business. For organizations already running a significant share of their workloads on Java, optimizing the JVM can be one of the fastest paths to measurable returns across both cost reduction and operational stability.

About Azul

Azul is the trusted leader in enterprise Java for today’s AI and cloud-first world. Its open source-based Java platform empowers organizations to optimize the entire Java lifecycle to accelerate performance, strengthen security, reduce licensing and cloud costs, and boost developer productivity. Azul powers mission-critical systems for 36% of the Fortune 100, 50% of the Forbes Top 10 World’s Most Valuable Brands, and the world’s top 10 financial trading companies. Learn more at azul.com and follow @azulsystems.​

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¹ Net Present Value (NPV) – the present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made unless other projects have higher NPVs.

² Present Value (PV) – the present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit estimates given at an interest rate (the discount rate). The PVs of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.