New Relic’s 2023 Report: Amazon Leads JDK Market, Java 17 Usage Quadruples
Adoption of Java 17, the most recent Long Term Support (LTS) version of Java, has skyrocketed, growing 430% in the past year, according to New Relic’s latest report on Java usage. The report also found that Amazon Corretto is now the most-used Java Development Kit (JDK), with a 31% share of Java instances. This significant growth highlights the increasing preference for more modern Java versions and Amazon’s influence in the Java ecosystem.
More than 9% of Java production applications use Java 17 today, versus fewer than 1% in 2022, the 2023 State of the Java Ecosystem Report says. Java 17, aka JDK 17, was published in September 2021. As an LTS release, Java 17 receives several years of Premier-level and extended support from Oracle. The LTS designation makes it a stable and reliable choice for enterprises looking to adopt the latest Java features while ensuring long-term support.
New Relic found that more than 56% of the production Java applications it monitored use Java 11, an LTS release published in September 2018. This version remains the dominant choice among Java users, reflecting its balance of modern features and long-term support. Java 8, an LTS release from 2014, was the second most-used version in production, with nearly 33% of monitored applications, down from 46% in 2022. This decline suggests a gradual shift towards newer versions as organizations upgrade their Java environments. Less than 1% of production applications are still using Java 7, which arrived in July 2011, indicating a move away from older, unsupported versions.
New Relic compiled its report based on data gathered in January 2023 from millions of applications that provide performance data to the company’s observability platform. This extensive dataset allows New Relic to offer a comprehensive view of Java usage trends, although the data is anonymized to provide a general overview rather than a detailed global picture. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of the Java ecosystem and the ongoing transition towards newer Java versions.
The report’s insights into JDK usage reveal a competitive landscape among Java vendors. Amazon Corretto’s rise to the top spot is notable, reflecting its growing popularity and the trust developers place in Amazon’s open-source JDK distribution. Other JDK vendors, including Oracle, still maintain significant shares, but Amazon’s ascendance indicates a shifting preference in the developer community.
The increasing adoption of Java 17 and the prominence of Amazon Corretto suggest that the Java community values both modern language features and reliable support. As enterprises continue to modernize their Java applications, the trend towards adopting the latest LTS releases and choosing trusted JDK vendors like Amazon is likely to persist. This evolution in the Java ecosystem highlights the importance of staying current with language updates and selecting robust JDK distributions to ensure optimal performance and security for Java applications.