Middleware runs quietly in the background of most applications, which makes it easy to overlook its lifecycle. In effect, support timelines are published by vendors and typically predictable, but many teams don’t track them closely. However, the impact of running on an application server or other middleware that is not fully supported can cause issues with your applications.

In this blog post, we will look at the security limitations and other challenges that your applications may be experiencing when running on an aging middleware technology.

Every software evolves, until it reaches its natural end of life, even the strongest one. This is valid for application runtimes too. They have lifecycles, and when they reach certain milestones, they can affect how the applications they support operate. Yet, many organizations continue to run their mission-critical enterprise Java applications on aging platforms.

One prominent example is the case of Java EE 8-compatible application servers, most of which are now receiving limited support, such as JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7 that recently moved out of Full Support.  

How can organizations identify if an ageing runtime is impacting their applications and operations? Let's dig in.

Modernizing legacy applications might sound like a dry, box-ticking IT initiative, but let’s be real: for most dev teams, it’s more like pulling out the engine of a moving car and swapping it mid-traffic. Still, it is necessary and is part of every application’s lifecycle as systems inevitably age. As a result, integrations may break, security holes can start to creep in, and eventually, even the most battle-hardened enterprise Java monolith can feel more like a liability than an asset. 

Despite this preamble, legacy application modernization doesn’t have a pure technical exercise dreaded by teams. With the right approach, it becomes a high-return investment that brings your software stack up to speed with the pace of business, tech as well as user expectations. In this blog post, we cover what legacy application modernization is, its benefits and challenges as well as best practices to help you plan a successful modernization strategy for your enterprise Java systems.  

Cloud adoption has transformed how developers build and scale applications, but it also brings new challenges in controlling costs. As cloud bills grow alongside usage, designing cost-efficient cloud architectures becomes essential for developers, DevOps specialists, architects and team leaders.

This post explores key strategies for optimizing cloud expenditure and align it with actual needs without incurring cloud wastage spend.

As a Java developer, you may not control runtime support contracts, but what you can do is help your team stay ahead of platform shifts that impact stability, compliance and portability. And here’s a big one:

📢 Red Hat officially announced that JBoss EAP 7 reached the end of Maintenance Support and entered Extended Life Support Phase 1 (ELS-1) on June 30, 2025.

This marks the beginning of a gradual end-of-support timeline that affects all Java EE 8 applications running on JBoss EAP 7.x. The change was confirmed by Red Hat as part of its product lifecycle updates, and it’s a clear sign that organizations need to plan for what's next. If your manager asks you for an overview on what's happening and the options at hands, this blog post is for you: we summarized everything you need to know and what you can do for your Java EE 8 applications.

You've probably been in that hallway conversation (or Teams/Zoom meeting) where DevOps, SRE and Platform Engineering all get thrown around. Sometimes these words are used interchangeably, as if they were synonyms. Sometimes they indicate different aspects, but nobody really agrees on what they are.

If you can relate, know that you're not alone. That's why we decided to walk through the core differences (and overlaps) of what each term means for us at Payara. 

Kubernetes, also known as K8s has become the de facto platform for orchestrating modern microservices architectures, promising resilience, scalability and faster deployment pipelines for Java applications. But for many developers, that promise often hides a thorny reality: Kubernetes is powerful—but also painfully complex.

Many enterprise Java application developers are facing the same challenge: handling the many legacy systems used by their organizations. Modernizing these is critical to improving scalability, performance and security. Yet, many teams are still supporting workloads based on Java SE 8 or earlier versions, despite newer versions and modern frameworks offering significant advantages. This aversity to refreshing such applications stems precisely from the importance these pieces of software have within an organization, as their disruption can considerably impact business operations.  

This blog is your practical guide to successfully navigating that shift: from evaluating legacy codebases to leveraging cloud-native architectures, CI/CD pipelines and runtime tools to futureproof your enterprise Java applications while streamlining key modernization efforts. 

When the SIFMA Foundation needed to modernize its aging financial education platform used by thousands of students, it turned to Payara Platform Enterprise for a scalable, reliable Java-based solution that could run seamlessly on IBM Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) systems. The result: boost in user capacity per machine, streamlined deployments, and the flexibility to innovate continuously. With Payara’s responsive enterprise support and robust middleware technologies, SIFMA transitioned its mission-critical system to a modern architecture that is empowering the application and the organization to grow its impact, serve more students, and deploy updates confidently and efficiently.