2022 State of the Java Ecosystem Report Highlights Version Adoption, Vendor Share, and Containerization Trends

New Relic recently published the "2022 State of the Java Ecosystem" report, providing background and insights into the current Java ecosystem based on performance data collected from millions of applications, covering the most used versions, popular vendors, and the rise of containerization.

Although Java 11 was officially released in 2018, the report indicates that as of March 2020, the vast majority of applications were still on Java 8, accounting for 84.48% of usage, but a notable shift toward Java 11 has occurred since then.

Current data shows that over 48% of production applications now run on Java 11 (up from 11.11% in 2020), while Java 8 remains close behind at 46.45%. Java 17 usage is still low but has already surpassed Java 6, 10, and 16, and support for Java 7 is expected to end in 2022 despite 1.71% of applications still using it; Java 6, though EOL, is still used by 0.27% of applications, mainly legacy systems.

Non‑LTS Java versions see very low adoption, with only 2.7% of applications using them; among these, Java 14 holds the highest share, while Java 10 and Java 16 are at the bottom.

In terms of vendors, Oracle remains the most popular JDK provider but its market share has dropped from about 75% in 2020 to 34.48%. Amazon’s share has risen sharply to 22%, followed by Eclipse Adoptium at 11.48%, Azul Systems at 8.17%, Red Hat at 6%, and IcedTea at 5.38%.

Containerized applications have become mainstream, with more than 70% of the Java applications reported to New Relic running in containers.

For the full details, see the complete report: https://newrelic.com/resources/report/2022-state-of-java-ecosystem