Why Java 17 Is Surging: 430% Growth and What It Means for Developers

New Relic 2023 Java Ecosystem Report

New Relic’s 2023 Java Ecosystem Report analyzes data from millions of applications to show the current state of Java in production.

Version Adoption

Java 11 remains the most popular LTS version, used by over 56% of applications, up from 48% in 2022 and 11% in 2020. Java 8 follows with about 33% usage, down from 46% in 2022.

Java 17, released in September 2021, has seen a 430% increase in adoption within a year, now powering more than 9% of applications, while Java 7 usage has fallen to 0.28% after its support ended in 2022.

Enterprise Migration

Nearly three‑quarters of surveyed organizations plan to adopt Java 17 within the next year, and 79% already use Spring Boot, with many intending to increase its usage.

Spring Framework 6.0 and Spring Boot 3.0 require Java 17 as a minimum, underscoring its importance for modern Java development.

Cloud‑Native Evolution

Java is experiencing a cloud‑native resurgence; one‑third of Java applications are deployed on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, and half of the applications need modernization, driven by maintainability and security concerns.

Infrastructure and serverless platforms are seen as key evolution paths for Java workloads.

Developer Preferences

Web applications dominate the Java landscape, while desktop apps account for only 18% of surveyed products. Full‑stack Java development interests 70% of respondents, followed by backend development.

Among front‑end frameworks, Angular (37%) and React (32%) lead, with Vue at 16%.

Tools and Resources

Alibaba’s EMT4J (Eclipse Migration Toolkit for Java) helps automate upgrades from Java 8 to 11 and 17, reflecting industry efforts to ease migration.