Sun Microsystems has launched a new subscription-based Java product designed to offer firms and ISVs a longer support period for releases, and improved access to technology updates.

Java Platform Standard Edition (SE) for Businesses is primarily targeted at customers who want up to 15 years of support for the platform, said Sun. It includes free support for the latest non-subscription release of Java SE and three years of quarterly maintenance updates per release family.

"Customers and partners running Java applications on older release families now have a choice of either migrating to a newer release or subscribing to Java SE for Business to continue receiving critical reliability, availability and security updates, as well as new operating environment support for their existing applications," said Jeet Kaul, vice president of the client Software group at Sun.

Customers will also get quicker access to security fixes via Java SE for Business Revisions, and is available via a company-wide license with three levels of support – standard, premium and premium plus. Pricing is calculated per employee per year.