Based on feedback received from a large number of customers and ISVs, Sun decided to create a Java SE for Business support offering which will extend the amount of time that Sun provides updates for Java SE releases. This will be done via paid support subscriptions. According to Jeet Kaul, vice president, Client Software Group at Sun:
Customers and partners running Java applications on older release families now have a choice of either migrating to a newer release or subscribing to Java SE for Business to continue receiving critical reliability, availability and security updates, as well as new operating environment support for their existing applications.
Offered as a company wide license and priced on a per employee per year basis, Java SE for Business is available at three different levels of support: Standard, Premium and Premium Plus and is available for the 1.4, 5.0 and 6.0 versions running on Solaris 10, Windows and Red Hat Linux. Java SE 7.0 is due to be released in 2009. Solaris customers can receive access to Java SE for Business at no additional cost.
Below are some of the highlights of the features and benefits offered through the new support subscriptions:
- Extended duration of maintenance: Java SE for Business includes extended duration of maintenance for up to 15 years. The current maintenance period for Java SE is 3 years (it used to be 6 years).
- Faster access to critical fixes with standard revisions: Premium or Premium Plus customers can request their critical fix to be considered for the next available revision or update.
- Mission-critical support with custom revisions: A new custom revision including a needed fix is available to Premium Plus customers at an extra cost.
- Sun xVM Server support: Customers can automate systems management and consolidate operations through the use of the Sun xVM Server and xVM Ops Center.
- Java VisualVM (available fall 2008): Tool which allows tracking down the root cause of reliability, availability, or scalability issues in Java applications.
- New Java Plug-In (available fall 2008): Enables java client applications to run multiple instances and release families of Java SE for Business within one instance of the browser.
Another benefit for Java SE for Business customers who run their Java applications on Windows and have significant legacy dependencies on Java SE 1.4 was described by Gavin Clarke:
Significantly, Sun's paid support will see Java SE 1.4, launched in 2002, updated to work with Microsoft's Windows Server 2008. This in turn mean old versions of products such as BEA WebLogic and Oracle Application Server that use Java EE will run better on this new Microsoft platform.
The traditional Java SE will continue to be freely downloadable and Sun remains committed to keeping the Java platform open. As it was the case for more than a year, Java SE releases will continue to be developed under the General Public License version 2 as part of the OpenJDK open source community.