DEVOPSdigest

Azul and Chainguard announced a strategic partnership that will unite Azul’s commercial support and curated OpenJDK distributions with Chainguard’s Linux distro, software factory and container images.

Chainguard will build from source Java container images that incorporate Azul’s commercially supported build of OpenJDK that’s part of Azul Platform Core, enabling enterprises to accelerate developer productivity, eliminate costly engineering toil and harden their software supply chain security.

The partnership between Azul and Chainguard delivers hardened, zero-CVE containers for Java versions 21 and beyond, built from Azul source code, and backed by commercial Java support from Azul. Together, the companies offer a streamlined, secure foundation for Java applications that reduces risk, accelerates delivery and eliminates the trade-off between security and support.

With Azul and Chainguard integrating zero-CVE container images built entirely from source and tested using the Java Compatibility Kit (JCK, TCK), joint customers benefit from reduced risk across their application surface area while maintaining commercial support services for their Java runtimes. Through Azul’s stabilized, security-only Critical Patch Updates, engineering teams can now rapidly deploy new Java images, spending less time patching and testing one-off containers, so organizations can redirect development resources and ship secure software faster.

“Our customers need solutions that reduce risk and build trust at every layer of their modern software deployment stack,” said Dan Lorenc, co-founder and CEO at Chainguard. “Today, we’re bringing Chainguard’s expertise in building minimal, zero-CVE images and Azul’s expertise in Java together to create the most secure, commercial-grade containers for cloud-native workloads.”

“Choosing a hardened container shouldn’t mean sacrificing timely security-only updates and commercial support services for your Java runtimes,” said Scott Sellers, co-founder and CEO at Azul. “Today, we’re excited to offer enterprises best-in-breed hardened Java containers from Chainguard while leveraging world-class commercial support from Azul.”

Joint customers consuming these new Azul Java container images via Chainguard Containers will receive commercial Java support services through the Azul Platform Core offering.