We recently released Ion 3.5, which delivers a huge leap forward in Ion’s ability to manage Java. In this post, we’ll drill deeper into the value Ion 3.5 delivers for any organization using Java in business-critical web applications.
There are many Java management improvements in Ion 3.5. The most obvious is the rewrite Ion’s Java Version Manager to make it much easier to use, eliminating many of the edge cases that required special settings to complete the remediation. It also now very clearly displays the Java version selected on the profile properties page – no more deciphering the Java setting from the obscure Custom Files entries. Additionally, Ion 3.5 is designed to handle Java 8’s unique installation path for each version, ensuring updates to the default Java version won’t impact any of the legacy version management settings in Ion. Learn more about keeping Java up to date with Ion in this demo video.
But the changes aren’t limited to the management interface. Ion 3.5 delivers the ability to manage the ever-increasing Java warnings that end users routinely face. In recent months, Oracle has made a push to encourage all users to update Java and run the latest version. While this approach may be well suited for consumer environments, our enterprise customers have been challenged by support calls from end users who try to heed these warnings and attempt to update Java on their business PCs. At best, the user updates fail due to a lack of adequate permissions, and at worst the user succeeds in updating Java and subsequently breaks critical business applications in the process. Ion 3.5 will now suppress these warnings by default for Ion-managed web applications, avoiding end user confusion and eliminating support issues.
Along with these ‘under the hood’ Java handling improvements, our development team has continued to tweak Ion’s code and discovered new ways to improve performance. Web application load times are still constrained to JVM load times themselves, but Ion 3.5 has increased performance where possible in our code and processes.
Ion 3.5 continues to make the Java management process easier for customers, thus delivering on one of Browsium’s core browser management platform scenarios — enabling side-by-side, secure, and isolated Java versioning. To learn more about how Ion improves Java security, read our whitepaper: Managing Java Security in the Enterprise.
Overall, Ion 3.5 delivers unparalleled Java management. With the addition of robust Java 8 support and warning message suppression, along with the ability to manage versions as far back as the Java platform can go, Ion continues to deliver the ‘future proof’ browser management platform required by enterprise organizations. If you’re an existing customer, you will find the Ion 3.5 download on your software license key webpage. If you’re new to Ion, and are interested in trying the new Java management features, please visit our web form to download an Ion evaluation kit.
