It is easy to deploy Java Web Apps from IntelliJ; deployment takes seconds, not minutes.

Azure App Service provides a managed Web App Container environment for your app to run in. That means that all you have to worry about is your app code. App Service handles the provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling and app health monitoring for you. Even though App Service handles all of these aspects for you, you still have control over all the settings if you want to customize how your environment runs.

In IntelliJ, right click on a Web App project and select Azure -> Publish as Azure Web App, and the publish wizard will walk you through the process.

The wizard will present you with options to choose from, such as to create or use an existing Web App Container or App Service Plan. 

Afterwards, go ahead and choose a Web App Container and click OK to deploy your Web App to Azure.

When your app is ready, you will see a link named Published in Status.
 
Now that you have your Web App up and running, try making a few small changes to your app and redeploying them, using the same tools. Once you get your app code set up, your deployments are incremental deployments and should get very fast redeploys.
 
Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ is available from Plugins @ JetBrains and as open source from GitHub. Interested in learning more? Read the documentation pages on how to easily install and deploy Web Apps to Azure. If you're an Eclipse user, we recommend you to check out the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse. Furthermore, you can also find plenty of info about Java on Azure at https://azure.com/java.
 

There is more to come …

This is just the first step in our journey to enable Java developers to get things done in IntelliJ. As you read this blog, the Java on Azure developer experience team is hard at work on the next edition of the Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ and is looking forward to lighting up many more Azure developer experiences in IntelliJ. While we will update you regularly, please let us know what you think via the comments below, GitHub or StackOverflow.