AEM 6.5 and Java 17

AEM 6.5.x, released in Apr 2019, is the widely adopted AEM release ever by on premise and managed services customers. It supports JRE versions 8 & 11, but there is a growing demand for Java 17 support from AEM customer community, as well as a need to address known vulnerabilities in third party libraries that require Java 17 support.

The session will delve into the key motivations behind introducing Java 17 support for AEM 6.5 customer base and the unique technical challenges it presents. It would highlight the distinctions/changes between AEM 6.5 as it exists today and the need for a new AEM release adding support for Java 17 and addressing the known vulnerabilities. How an existing AEM 6.5 customer should prepare for this upgrade and what are the potential tools/utilities can become handy in this upgrade will also be covered in the session.

Additionally, the discussion will cover backward-incompatible changes, API changes and respective recommendations which developers can follow to make it a smooth exercise of upgrade. Finally, there will be a list shared of already deprecated/EoL features which Adobe plans not to support further while moving to Java 17.