Java Made Me Poor, Frustrated, and Ultimately Right
Why Thoma Bravo's big bet on Azul just woke up the 2003 version of me
Posted by Shashi Bellamkonda | November 28, 2025
I have a confession.
In the early 2000s I bought 100 shares of Sun Microsystems. Today those shares buy me exactly one pumpkin spice latte… maybe.
I also spent nights writing e-commerce shopping carts in JSP and servlets, cursing every single getter and setter known to mankind. I eventually ran away from object-oriented programming screaming.
So when my good friend Christi Olson posted on LinkedIn last week that Thoma Bravo just took a majority stake in Azul, I almost scrolled past it.
Then I stopped. And smiled. Because Java – the language I loved to hate – is having the last laugh, and it's laughing all the way to the bank.
Java never died. It just went invisible.
While we were busy arguing about Node vs Go vs Rust on Twitter, Java quietly kept running:
- 90% of Fortune 500 companies
- All 10 of the world's biggest banks
- Most payment networks you used today
- Your airline reservation, your Uber backend, your Netflix recommendations
Java didn't get sexy. It got rich.
The cloud bill surprise nobody talks about
Here's the stat that made me sit up straight:
In many enterprises, Java workloads eat 30–50% of the entire cloud compute budget.
Garbage-collection pauses, cold starts, and over-provisioning are quietly burning billions every year. And now that companies are stuffing AI/ML models into the same JVMs (Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams), the problem just got 10× bigger.
This is exactly Thoma Bravo's favorite game
Thoma Bravo doesn't buy distressed companies. They buy "boring" infrastructure that is suddenly mission-critical, pour rocket fuel on it, and 3–10× the value.
Azul's numbers that customers openly share:
- 20–50% lower cloud bills
- Up to 5× higher throughput
- Near-zero GC pauses (yes, really)
- Faster cold starts for serverless and Kubernetes
Translation: Azul turns the JVM from cost center into profit center.
So what now?
If you run anything at scale in 2025–2030, someone in finance is about to ask:
"Why are we still paying Oracle Java subscriptions… or burning this much cloud spend on vanilla OpenJDK?"
The answer is increasingly going to be Azul.
And the language I abandoned in 2008 might just make the next wave of infrastructure millionaires.
My Sun shares are still worthless, but this time I'm not missing the ride.
Personal request: If anyone from the Azul team is reading this (Scott, Greg, or Christi's friends 😉), I'd love a briefing. I promise to leave my 2003 JSP trauma at the door.
DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter @shashib – coffee is on me.
See you on the other side of the JVM enlightenment.
— Shashi
What's your biggest Java pain point in 2025 — cost, latency, security, or observability?
Drop it in the comments. Let's compare war stories.
Java Made Me Poor, Frustrated, and Ultimately Right
Why Thoma Bravo's big bet on Azul just woke up the 2003 version of me
Posted by Shashi Bellamkonda | November 28, 2025
I have a confession.
In the early 2000s I bought 100 shares of Sun Microsystems. Today those shares buy me exactly one pumpkin spice latte… maybe.
I also spent nights writing e-commerce shopping carts in JSP and servlets, cursing every single getter and setter known to mankind. I eventually ran away from object-oriented programming screaming.
So when my good friend Christi Olson posted on LinkedIn last week that Thoma Bravo just took a majority stake in Azul, I almost scrolled past it.
Then I stopped. And smiled. Because Java – the language I loved to hate – is having the last laugh, and it's laughing all the way to the bank.
Java never died. It just went invisible.
While we were busy arguing about Node vs Go vs Rust on Twitter, Java quietly kept running:
- 90% of Fortune 500 companies
- All 10 of the world's biggest banks
- Most payment networks you used today
- Your airline reservation, your Uber backend, your Netflix recommendations
Java didn't get sexy. It got rich.
The cloud bill surprise nobody talks about
Here's the stat that made me sit up straight:
In many enterprises, Java workloads eat 30–50% of the entire cloud compute budget.
Garbage-collection pauses, cold starts, and over-provisioning are quietly burning billions every year. And now that companies are stuffing AI/ML models into the same JVMs (Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams), the problem just got 10× bigger.
This is exactly Thoma Bravo's favorite game
Thoma Bravo doesn't buy distressed companies. They buy "boring" infrastructure that is suddenly mission-critical, pour rocket fuel on it, and 3–10× the value.
Azul's numbers that customers openly share:
- 20–50% lower cloud bills
- Up to 5× higher throughput
- Near-zero GC pauses (yes, really)
- Faster cold starts for serverless and Kubernetes
Translation: Azul turns the JVM from cost center into profit center.
So what now?
If you run anything at scale in 2025–2030, someone in finance is about to ask:
"Why are we still paying Oracle Java subscriptions… or burning this much cloud spend on vanilla OpenJDK?"
The answer is increasingly going to be Azul.
And the language I abandoned in 2008 might just make the next wave of infrastructure millionaires.
My Sun shares are still worthless, but this time I'm not missing the ride.
Personal request: If anyone from the Azul team is reading this (Scott, Greg, or Christi's friends 😉), I'd love a briefing. I promise to leave my 2003 JSP trauma at the door.
DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter @shashib – coffee is on me.
See you on the other side of the JVM enlightenment.
— Shashi
What's your biggest Java pain point in 2025 — cost, latency, security, or observability?
Drop it in the comments. Let's compare war stories.
Disclaimer: This blog post reflects my personal views only. AI tools may have been used for brevity, structure, or research support. Please independently verify any information before relying on it. This content does not represent the views of my employer, Infotech.com.
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