New insights from the latest 2023 State of the Java Ecosystem Report by New Relic unveil that the usage of Java 17, the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of Java, has seen a monumental growth of 430% within the past year. Additionally, with a 31% share of Java instances, Amazon Corretto has become the most used Java Development Kit (JDK), outperforming Oracle. Today, more than 9% of Java production applications utilize Java 17, in contrast to less than 1% in 2022. Java 17, also referred to as JDK 17, was launched in September 2021. As an LTS release, Oracle provides various years of Premier-level and extended support for Java 17. The analysis conducted by New Relic showed that over 56% of the production Java applications surveyed employed Java 11, an LTS edition released in September 2018.
Following that, Java 8, another LTS version from 2014, became the second most popular version in production, accounting for almost 33% of monitored applications. This is a significant decrease compared to its 46% usage in 2022. Surprisingly, Java 7, released in July 2011, is still being utilized by less than 1% of production applications. New Relic gathered this information from millions of applications in January 2023, which contribute performance data to their observability platform. The data was anonymized to offer a general perspective of Java usage, without presenting a comprehensive global portrait of Java adoption. The report also uncovered that Amazon now holds the title of the most popular JDK vendor with a 31% market share. Back in 2020, Oracle held the majority of the market with roughly 75%, but has since dwindled to 34% in 2022 and 28% in 2023. New Relic attributes Oracle’s decline to its more restrictive licensing of Java 11. However, the company has recently adopted a more open stance with Java 17. Furthermore, Java 14, released in January 2020, emerged as the most prevalent non-LTS version of Java.
Adoption of non-LTS versions, which only receive six months of support, remains relatively low with merely 1.6% of applications deploying them. Non-LTS versions are released every six months, only disrupted by LTS versions, which now arrive every two years. Java 17 is currently the prominent LTS release, while Java 21, the next LTS edition, is set to debut in September. According to New Relic, 70% of Java applications report their data from a container. Additionally, the G1 garbage collector remains the go-to choice for Java 11 or newer users, with 65% of New Relic's clients utilizing it. As the tech industry continues to evolve, low-code and no-code solutions like AppMaster empower businesses to craft web and mobile applications with ease. Through utilizing the potential of no-code solutions, organizations can enhance productivity and optimize costs, providing them with the necessary tools to keep pace with industry advancements.
