Azul Appoints Kenny Johnston as Chief Product Officer to Drive AI-First Java Platform Strategy

SINGAPORE, August 18, 2026: Azul has appointed Kenny Johnston as Chief Product Officer, bringing in an enterprise product leader with deep experience in agentic AI, DevOps and observability platforms as the company sharpens its focus on AI-first Java.

Azul, which positions itself as a trusted leader in enterprise Java for the AI-first world, said Johnston will lead product strategy for its AI-first Java platform, which is engineered to meet the performance, security and cost demands of running enterprise AI workloads at scale.

The appointment comes at a time when enterprises are increasingly bringing AI and agentic workflows into mission-critical systems, many of which continue to run on Java. Azul said its AI-first Java platform is designed to support AI-driven, agentic software development with the performance, observability and security enterprises need to operate AI-driven workloads at scale.

Enterprise AI Experience

Johnston joins Azul after serving as Chief Product and Technology Officer at Luciq, an agentic AI observability platform built for enterprise mobile app teams. At Luciq, he led global product, design, customer success and engineering functions, delivering agentic capabilities including SmartResolve and Agentic Mode.

Earlier, he was Senior Director of Product Management at GitLab, where he led product management for operations and infrastructure products including GitLab CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, Package and Release Management, Observability and Incident Response. At Rackspace, he served as Director of Product Management for Rackspace Private Cloud, where he more than tripled annual revenue and helped the company earn recognition as HPE’s Global Service Provider Partner of the Year.

As CPO, Johnston will lead product strategy and execution across Azul’s AI-first Java platform, including Azul Prime, Azul Core, Azul Intelligence Cloud, Azul Payara Micro and Azul Payara Server. The latter two products were added to the Azul platform through its December 2025 acquisition of Payara.

His mandate will focus on advancing Azul’s product roadmap around the new pressures AI is placing on enterprise Java estates, including cost, performance, security, modernisation and productivity.

Enterprise Java for the AI Era

Azul’s open source-based Java platform is used by organisations to optimise the Java lifecycle, accelerate performance, strengthen security, reduce licensing and cloud costs, and improve developer productivity. The company says its technology powers mission-critical systems for 37% of the Fortune 100, 50% of the Forbes Top 10 World’s Most Valuable Brands, and the world’s top 10 financial trading companies.

For enterprises, the appointment signals Azul’s intent to position Java as a critical foundation for AI-era application performance and modernisation. As companies deploy AI agents, copilots and automated workflows into production environments, the underlying systems those tools access must deliver consistent performance, lower latency, stronger security and controlled cloud costs.

Johnston’s product background across agentic AI observability, DevOps, cloud infrastructure and enterprise platforms gives Azul a leader closely aligned with these demands.

For Azul, the next phase of enterprise Java growth is likely to be shaped by how effectively companies can modernise existing Java estates without disrupting the mission-critical systems that continue to run core business operations. With Johnston as CPO, Azul is placing product strategy at the centre of that transition.