Microsoft Open Technologies & Azul Systems® to Partner on an OpenJDK™ Build

, the award-winning leader in Java runtime scalability, announced today at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) that they are partnering on a Windows distribution build of the community-driven open source Java™ implementation, known as OpenJDK™, for Windows Server on the Windows Azure platform.

As part of this partnership, Azul Systems will build, certify and distribute a compliant OpenJDK-based distribution meeting the Java SE specification for use with Windows Server environments on Azure. The new OpenJDK-based offering will be freely distributed and licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) with the Classpath Exception.

Open source is now a key building block for enterprise IT strategies. Customers also require choice in where and how they deploy new and existing Java applications. Through this partnership the global community of Java developers gain access to open source Java on the Windows Azure cloud. It will also serve the growing number of Java applications that both small and medium businesses and global enterprises depend on to run their businesses.

Scott Sellers, Azul Systems president and CEO, said, “This initiative is all about bringing Java to the masses in the cloud. We will be providing a fully open and unconstrained Java environment — with open choice of third-party stacks — for developers and essential applications deployed on Windows Azure.”