The 2019 Jakarta EE Developer Survey has insights not only into adoption of Jakarta EE, but the state of Java as a whole. It also charts Jakarta EE's move towards cloud native.

The survey, conducted online in March by the Eclipse Foundation on behalf of the Jakarta EE Working Group, attracted responses from 1772 individuals, the majority of then in the EMEA region. 

Among its findings are that most applications today are being built by development teams using multiple programming languages and most enterprise applications are usually built primarily using frameworks based on languages such as Java that have stood the test of time: 

Despite the use of other languages Java dominates when it comes to to deploying applications in production environments.

The report states:

most companies are intent on protecting their past strategic investments in Java — including retaining internal Java developer expertise.

So which versions of Java SE are used in production?

As we reported when the JVM Ecosystem Survey Report was published last November, Java 8 is the most used version. While that survey, where the percentages added up to 100, reported that 79% of developers used Java 8, this one, where respondents could report multiple versions, found 85% were running Java 8 and it claims:

Adoption of Java 11 has taken off, leapfrogging Java 9 and 10.

Again developers are working with more than one version of JavaEE but the move to the JavaEE 8 since the 2018 survey is clear (note the 2018 figures are given at the bottom):

On the basis of the 2018 survey, the first undertaken by the Jakarta EE Working Group, The Eclipse Foundation has announced a “cloud native Java” path forward for Jakarta EE and this year's survey confirms moves being made in the right direction. Writing on the Eclipse Foundation blog, Mike Milinkovich points out the findings that a third of developers report they are currently building cloud native architectures and another 30 percent planning to within the next year indicating that:

cloud native is critically important today and will continue to be so.

Another finding is that the number of Java applications running in the cloud is projected to substantially increase, with 32 percent of respondents expecting that they will be running nearly two-thirds of their Java applications in the cloud within the next two years.

Microservices is the leading architecture for implementing Java in the cloud according to 43 percent of respondents and the top framework for building cloud native applications in Java is Spring Boot:

Jakarta EE isn't, however, to top cloud native technology used by respondents - although again as the percentages add up to over 300 multiple technologies are in use, with Docker being the most popular:

These finding  support the top community priorities for Jakarta EE are a tie at first with better support for microservices and native integration with Kubernetes (both at 61 percent) 

Multiple IDEs for cloud native applications are also the norm, with Eclipse IDE the most popular, which may not come as a surprise given the survey comes from the Eclipse Foundation. 

Summing up the results  Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation stated:

"Java continues to dominate as the language of choice for organizations deploying applications in production environments. ..What’s most interesting is to see the acceleration in the adoption of Java in new cloud native architectures. Clearly the future of Jakarta EE is cloud native.” 

More Information

2019 Jakarta EE Developer Survey (pdf)

New Eclipse Foundation Community Survey of Java Developers

The Cloud Native Imperative

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