IBM WebSphere Liberty is a next-generation application runtime that accelerates the delivery of cloud-native applications, allowing your team to rapidly deliver differentiating innovation. Whether you're running microservices in a serverless environment or a traditional always on application, Liberty requires less infrastructure, saving costs, and providing the flexibility your organization needs to deploy on any cloud in a trusted, secure and open environment. Liberty empowers your development and platform engineering teams to continuously deliver code that meets and exceeds your customers' expectations. Adopt Liberty today and experience up to a 99% reduction in time to deploy code.
IBM WebSphere Liberty announces InstantOn for cloud-native Java.
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Explore how Liberty innovation can benefit your organization
Faster application start-up time using Liberty InstantOn versus without InstantOn.
Decreased time to code deployment for BlueCross BlueShield.
Reduced full deployment cycle for FlowFactor.
Liberty is optimized for containerized deployments, continually auto-tuning its performance to the environment.
Liberty’s smaller disk and memory footprint and higher throughput help reduce infrastructure and license costs.
IBM is committed to open standards, avoid vendor lock-in using the latest MicroProfile, Jakarta EE and Java EE.
Use cases
BlueCross optimizes computing resources and gives developers more flexibility and efficiency as a result of migrating to a modern WebSphere Liberty-based infrastructure.
FlowFactor helped a transport provider modernize apps and cut deployment times more than 99% with WebSphere Liberty.
FAQs
Open Liberty is an IBM open source project. WebSphere Liberty is built on Open Liberty. Most cloud-native developers and operators will find no differences between the two and can use either Open Liberty or WebSphere Liberty (or a combination of the two) in development and in production. Applications built on Open Liberty can also be run on WebSphere Liberty. All documentation for building and running cloud-native applications on Liberty is available on the Open Liberty website (link resides outside ibm.com).
If you are running and maintaining applications that use older technologies, such as Java EE 6, or APIs that help with migration from traditional WebSphere (or other traditional Java application servers), or your environments are managed by Installation Manager, or you are looking to perform centralized deployment and management of Liberty clusters in Virtual Machines, you need to develop and run those applications on WebSphere Liberty, rather than Open Liberty. Find out more in the IBM Documentation.
All WebSphere Liberty editions include older Java EE APIs, and APIs that make it easier to run applications migrated from traditional WebSphere, and other traditional Java application servers. WebSphere Hybrid Edition includes entitlement to all Liberty editions and entitlement to use Transformation Advisor. You can use Transformation Advisor to assess your applications and deployments to help identify the best Liberty target and generate Liberty server and container configuration to help with deployment.
WebSphere Liberty licenses are included if you buy IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition. WebSphere Hybrid Edition is sold in Virtual Processor Core (VPC) units. WebSphere Hybrid Edition entitles you to all Liberty editions - WebSphere Liberty Network Deployment, WebSphere Liberty (base), Open Liberty, and WebSphere Liberty Core. Contact us.
All editions of Liberty support for running Web Profile and Spring Boot. WebSphere Liberty Core is the most cost-effective edition and is available through WebSphere Hybrid Edition. For every VPC of Hybrid Edition you own, you are entitled to deploy 8 VPCs of Liberty Core.
Liberty centralized management is provided through Liberty Collectives. WebSphere Liberty Network Deployment (ND) is required to run the management servers known as Collective Controllers and application servers that are members of a cluster. For every VPC of Hybrid Edition you own, you are entitled to deploy 1 VPCs of Liberty ND. If you want centralized management of non-clustered Liberty servers, then those non-clustered servers can use WebSphere Liberty (base) or WebSphere Liberty Core licenses. Open Liberty cannot be managed by a Liberty Collective.
You get IBM support for Open Liberty if you buy WebSphere Hybrid Edition. This gives you fast, dedicated help, 24x7 help for business-critical issues, fixes for previous releases, and you can open a case online, by chat, or by phone. For every VPC of Hybrid Edition you own, you are entitled to support for 4 VPCs of Open Liberty. Contact us.
- Yes. If you already have WebSphere Hybrid Edition, WebSphere Application Server, or WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, you are already entitled to use WebSphere Liberty and support for Open Liberty.
Liberty entitlement is included with each WebSphere product with the exception of WebSphere Automation
Designed to leverage a comprehensive collection of application runtimes, modernization tools and a Kubernetes container platform to adapt to their landscape needs.
Entitles traditional WebSphere, WebSphere and Open Liberty for cloud-native apps and modernization from traditional app servers.
Automate WebSphere security and operational activities to unlock the time for more strategic initiatives.