When legacy systems approach end-of-life (EOL), enterprise IT teams typically face the choice of moving forward at all costs with modernization projects or stay on unsupported infrastructure, sometimes having to invest in expensive lifetime support subscriptions. Ultimately, the choice of what to do often feels like a balancing act between progress and perceived stability, which can become especially tough when core business systems underpin revenue strategies and/or critical operations.
These two goals shouldn’t be at odds. In fact, remaining on end-of-support (EOS) technology cannot guarantee innovation or reliability, as new features and key fixes are limited and sometimes inexistent. Simultaneously, not all upgrades or migrations to newer platforms have a positive impact. While some can advance business operations and overall profitability, the adoption of the latest software, cloud solutions or AI models per se won’t necessarily propel your systems forward.
In the technology sector, there tends to be a misconception that innovation always means moving fast. But in enterprise IT, innovation often means moving deliberately, even if it means at a slower pace.
The Problem with Fixed Deadlines
This false impression often results in vendors across the industry setting rigid EOS and EOL dates that unrealistically assume customers are able to and/or have an appetite to modernize at the same pace as software release cycles. In practice, most organisations have built up years of interdependent systems, legacy integrations and compliance layers, which means that upgrading them is more than a purely technical exercise.
In most cases upgrades and migrations are an organizational transformation with rippling effects. Modernization projects are long, resource-intensive and can carry risks, especially if not properly planned. They require coordination across business units, thorough testing, and often a complete rethink of infrastructure as well as deployment models.
When we talk to CIOs about modernization, a consistent theme emerges. Organizations are often aware they need to move away from EOS and EOL software but also know many modernizations fail along the way. Also, they recognize that rushing is counterproductive. Compressed timelines lead to half-finished migrations, increased technical debt and team burnout. What CIOs really need is stability through customer-centric, predictable, reliable platforms that give them the means and confidence to modernize properly.
Payara’s Approach
At Payara, we design our support lifecycle around that reality, offering multi-year phases of full and extended support, with options for continued maintenance well beyond standard timelines. In addition, we made a conscious decision to help our users by postponing the EOL dates for some of our most popular runtimes, Payara Platform Enterprise 4 and 5, which support earlier Java EE versions. It became clear that many of our customers simply weren’t ready to upgrade their Java applications to more modern runtimes, frameworks or JDKs.
To learn more about Payara’s software lifecycle policy and key dates, check the blog post ‘Understanding the Payara Platform Enterprise Software Lifecycle: How We Support Long-Term Stability’.
It should also be said that this was not because of inaction on the part of our customers, but because they are often in the middle of complex modernization programmes and want to avoid destabilising production systems that run the business. Forcing those timelines would have created unnecessary risk and diversion of valuable resources. In particular, the transition from discontinued Java EE to more recent, fully supported frameworks such as Jakarta EE or Quarkus, require demanding refactoring and major code rewrites.
The decision to extend support wasn’t about resisting progress but rather enabling it responsibly. When teams know their current environment will remain secure and supported, they can focus on strategic and well-planned transformation instead of firefighting. If you are currently handling less recent enterprise Java versions and concerned about the way forward, check our latest webinar for practical insights.
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