Payara Services is a provider of trusted, stable runtimes for running enterprise Java applications on-premises, in the cloud, and in hybrid environments. The company’s products help global enterprises simplify application deployment and management, delivering reliability, security, and performance while helping with successful modernizations. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Payara Services founder and CEO Steve Millidge to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Steve Millidge’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Millidge said:
“After graduating in Physics, I began my career in software engineering, focusing on middleware technologies and Java. I then founded a middleware consulting company, which gave me additional valuable insight into the technology industry and allowed me to work closely with clients to solve real-world business challenges. What I always found exciting is the idea of building truly value-adding tools, i.e. software that could deliver a positive impact.”
“I’ve always been passionate about open-source technology and the collaborative, community-driven innovation it fosters. That passion, combined with a desire to create a more scalable and sustainable business, laid the foundation for the next stage in my career: software product development, which led to the foundation of Payara Services.”
“As the Founder and CEO of the company, my role spans strategic leadership, operational oversight and product vision. At the highest level, I’m responsible for guiding the direction of the company and ensuring that we stay aligned with our mission to support enterprise Java middleware in an innovative and user-centric way.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for Payara come together? Millidge shared:
“The idea for Payara Services came at a time when the end of commercial support for popular open-source enterprise Java application server, GlassFish, was announced in 2014. This left a gap in the market for enterprise-level support of the technology, which was still being widely used by organizations around the world.”
“Recognizing both the need and the opportunity, I decided to take over and fork the software to improve GlassFish while ensuring the level of service that organizations required. The vision was to create a modern, commercially supported and reliable application server that could support the many existing users looking for an enterprise-ready alternative. This initiative gave birth to Payara Server Enterprise and the formation of Payara Services as a company.”
“We launched Payara with the goal of offering a fully supported open-source application server that enterprise Java users could trust for their mission-critical applications. Since then, the company has grown to provide a suite of runtimes, developer tools and support services under the Payara Platform Enterprise.”
“Even more, we continue to evolve based on the needs of the Java community and our users. To this end, the fully open-source Payara Platform Community project acts as an innovation incubator. Payara actively engages with the community through forums, GitHub and events, to foster a vibrant ecosystem of users, contributors and advocates, providing support and guidance while ensuring that Payara Platform evolves in line with real-world needs.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Millidge explained:
“As part of the Payara Platform Enterprise suite of open-source, cloud-native middleware technologies, Payara Services offers enterprise Java application platforms and platform engineering solutions. These are designed to support organizations throughout the entire Java application lifecycle, from development to deployment, management and portability. With a focus on compatibility, modernization, security, compliance and operational resilience, Payara Platform Enterprise helps development teams to run, maintain, scale and evolve both new and legacy systems, ensure their integration and compatibility, streamline new development while ensuring full control over sensitive data.”
“Payara Platform Enterprise provides a range of runtimes, each purpose-built to support distinct application needs and lifecycle stages. These include Payara Server Enterprise, Payara Micro Enterprise, and Payara Qube.”
“Payara Server Enterprise provides a stable, full-featured middleware environment for traditional enterprise workloads and monolithic legacy Java EE applications. Payara Micro Enterprise offers a lightweight, container-friendly runtime optimized for microservices.”
“Combined with developer tools, such as Payara Starter code generator, connectors and expert services, Payara Platform Enterprise empowers organizations to maintain their mission-critical applications while providing the foundations to innovate and modernize with confidence, at their own pace.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Millidge noted:
“Our technologies and product offering has evolved considerably since the foundation of Payara Server Enterprise and Payara Services. Firstly, we have focused on ensuring Payara Server Enterprise runs natively on modern cloud infrastructure. We deliver releases monthly and reached version 7, which is compatible with Jakarta EE 11 and its features.”
“In addition, users can now benefit from a broader range of runtimes within Payara Platform Enterprise to address different application and operational needs, such as cloud computing, containerization, application modernization and the move to microservices architectures. Additions to Payara Platform Enterprise include Payara Micro Enterprise, a lightweight, containerized runtime built to support microservices; and the latest Payara Qube, a unified, zero-maintenance enterprise Java runtime for application deployment and management for multi- and hybrid-cloud environments. This supports Jakarta EE, Quarkus as well as Spring workloads, and is available as a fully managed, downloadable solution for data sovereignty or as a platform as a service (PaaS).”
“Payara Platform Enterprise is also featuring new, valuable tools, connectors and integrations. These are designed to provide a complete toolkit to speed up development, support reliable testing, simplify deployment as well as support smooth operations in development and production environment”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Millidge cited:
“One of the most significant milestones for Payara has been the consistent evolution and expansion of our technology portfolio, through the ongoing development of the Payara Platform and its suite of middleware solutions. We are always working hard to meet the changing needs of our customers and to remain ahead of the curve in enterprise Java with user-oriented products and services.”
“Thanks to our continuous investment in product development, Payara has been honored with the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise. Often called the “Knighthood for Businesses”, this UK business award is renowned worldwide and attests to our international success.”
“In effect, the award singles out and celebrates the most exciting and innovative businesses in the UK, with the International Trade award specifically aiming to celebrate those delivering impressive results on a global scale. Payara was recognized for increasing its annual revenue by 107% in three years, with export sales more than doubling from 33% to 75%.”
“Our product development and extended market reach led to another, equally important, achievement: the considerable growth of our team and the solidification of our company culture. A great example is the Payara Retreat, which is our annual, in-person company event focused on building stronger relationships across departments, aligning on strategic goals and encouraging collaboration. In 2019, 28 Payarans got together to take part in this activity. By last year, that number had grown to over 50. I am excited to meet again in September 2025 with an even larger team.”
Challenges Faced
Have you noticed any challenges in the market? How is Payara’s growing technology portfolio helping address them? Millidge acknowledged:
“The enterprise Java ecosystem is at a pivotal moment, shaped by both the remarkable evolution of infrastructure technologies and the realities of a maturing platform that was founded thirty years ago. Firstly, over the last five years, the industry has also been transformed by key advances. These include new software architecture and infrastructure, virtualization, containerization and the widespread adoption of orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes (K8s).”
“At the same time, many early-days enterprise Java applications are still running, and often form the backbone of key business operations. However, they can be difficult and costly to maintain, scale or adapt to new business needs.”
“The combination of these two trends is presenting a unique set of challenges. While innovations have unlocked new levels of scalability and flexibility, they have also introduced significant complexity as well as the need for effective application modernization strategies. Many developers now find themselves spending considerable portions of their time maintaining and fixing legacy applications as well as configuring and managing deployment environments.”
“Ultimately, there is a clear need for platforms that abstract away infrastructure complexity and provide automation, standardization and ease of use to support quick development cycles, reduce operational overheads and simplify modernization activities while providing a unified deployment experience across on-premises, multi-clouds and hybrid environments.”
“Compounding this is growing regulatory pressure, including emerging mandates like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which increases scrutiny around the security and supportability of software and supply chains. Enterprises need certified, fully supported and robust solutions they can trust in regulated environments. Meanwhile, developers face increasing complexity, not only in managing infrastructure but also in integrating modern capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI), which is becoming a key enabler for business innovation.”
“Looking ahead, the evolution of technology over the next five years will only intensify these trends. We can expect to see a new generation of smart, resilient platforms that unify deployment processes, simplify infrastructure management as well as deliver integrated monitoring and compliance out of the box.”
“The focus will be on enhancing productivity and enabling true self-service for development teams while supporting a diverse range of enterprise Java frameworks without vendor lock-in. Enhanced observability, security, and portability will become standard expectations, particularly as multi-cloud and hybrid deployments become the norm. Most importantly, modernization will remain at the forefront, with organizations seeking ways to bring legacy enterprise Java applications into the modern era without wholesale rewrites or excessive retraining.”
“Payara’s vision is closely aligned with these industry shifts, and our growing portfolio directly addresses these market realities. Our goal is to empower organizations to modernize, build, deploy and manage enterprise Java applications with unprecedented ease, speed, control and robustness.”
“We are committed to eliminating the complexity of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure, delivering a zero-maintenance, fully supported, secure platform that can effectively handle enterprise Java applications without compromising performance, security or data sovereignty. By automating deployment and management, we aim to free development teams to focus on innovation, accelerating application modernization and compatibility efforts while reducing costs and security risks associated with misconfigurations. This vision comes to life in our latest product, Payara Qube.”
“Beside simplifying cloud-native deployment, Payara is also evolving to support AI-driven development as a strategic direction for the future. For example, Payara Starter provides an intuitive and frictionless development experience for teams building enterprise Java applications. It offers a code and entity relationship (ER) diagram generator that incorporates AI functions and natural language commands to help users generate, customize, edit and refine code and diagrams.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Millidge affirmed:
“What sets Payara Services and its middleware technologies apart from its competitors is the strong focus on compatibility, portability and customer-centric innovation. Unlike many vendors that lock users into specific platforms, ecosystems, or force abrupt upgrades, Payara Platform Enterprise is centered around broad compatibility, long-term technology support and open standards. As a result, customers can ensure their applications remain portable across environments, versions and vendor technologies.”
“Different levels of cloud readiness and application lifecycle stages are included too, with Payara Platform Enterprise offering different solutions to address the level of maturity of an application while providing a straightforward path for application modernization and growth. Also, by focusing on the middleware layer, we can deliver finely tuned, enterprise-ready runtimes tailored specifically for enterprise Java workloads.”
“Another key differentiator of Payara Platform Enterprise is its out-of-the-box support for all major cloud providers and seamless integration with containerized environments, delivering the flexibility and agility enterprises need to stay competitive in a cloud-first world.”
“Furthermore, Payara Services’s philosophy is rooted in responsiveness and proactiveness. Frequent, predictable release cycles ensure that users benefit from continuous improvements, security updates and new features. Simultaneously, our technical support is widely recognized for being both alert and deeply knowledgeable, offering hands-on, reliable assistance that consistently meets the needs of development teams.”
“Finally, we believe in transparency and cost-effectiveness, which help ensure customers receive clear value without hidden complexities or unnecessary expenses. As a result, organizations can confidently invest in Payara Services as a long-term partner for building, running, scaling and modernizing enterprise Java applications.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Millidge highlighted:
“Recently, we have been supporting a number of large-scale application modernization projects. One that stands out is with the SIFMA Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing financial literacy through its flagship program, The Stock Market Game™. Each year, this online simulation reaches over 700,000 students, teaching them real-world financial skills at scale. As participation increased, SIFMA’s existing infrastructure, which was built on legacy, proprietary middleware, became a bottleneck, limiting the organization’s ability to scale and modernize its application.”
“Recognizing the need for a robust, future-proof solution, SIFMA Foundation partnered with Payara Services to modernize the platform. The organization transitioned from its C and C++ system to a modern, Java-based architecture using Payara Platform Enterprise, which offered out-of-the-box compatibility with the existing IBM Advanced Interactive eXecutive (AIX) machines. The migration was smooth, and Payara’s responsive support team quickly addressed challenges, such as a Java compatibility issue during a silent AIX upgrade, ensuring minimal disruption.”
“The results were transformative. SIFMA Foundation’s system performance improved dramatically, with each machine’s capacity increasing from supporting 1,000–2,000 users to 4,000–5,000 users, allowing the organization to scale its operations and serve more students than ever before. The development process also became more agile and manageable, enabling the team to implement updates and enhancements more efficiently.”
“According to SIFMA’s team, as its audience continues to increase, the organization plans to further expand their use of Payara Platform Enterprise, confident in its flexibility and performance.”
