Amid Growth in Cloud Native Enterprise Java Adoption, Eclipse Foundation Announces Results of 2020 Jakarta EE Developer Survey and Jakarta EE 9 Milestone Release

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 23, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations, today announced a milestone release of Jakarta EE 9 and the results of the industry’s most prominent survey for technical insights into enterprise Java, the 2020 Jakarta EE Developer Survey. Thousands of enterprise Java developers around the world (a 19% increase from 2019) participated in the survey. The results definitively showcase significantly increased growth in the use of Jakarta EE 8 and interest in cloud native Java overall. The 2020 Jakarta EE Developer Survey results can be downloaded in their entirety here.

“Since the release of Jakarta EE 8 in September 2019, we have witnessed meteoric growth for Jakarta EE, both in its use by developers and the certification of compatible products based on its specifications,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “Jakarta EE 8 has seen more certifications of Full Platform Compatible Products in 8 months than Java EE 8 had in over 2 years. With Jakarta EE 9 on track for release in fall of this year, the real work on innovation and the transition to cloud native Java and microservices support can begin.”

The objective of this survey was to help Java ecosystem stakeholders better understand the requirements, priorities, and perceptions of enterprise developer communities. The survey also sought to help the Java ecosystem gain a better understanding of how the cloud native world for enterprise Java is unfolding and what that means for their respective strategies and businesses. Conducted from April 6 to May 5 of this year, 2180 Jakarta EE developers participated in the survey. Despite only shipping in September 2019, Jakarta EE 8, the first major Jakarta EE release by the Eclipse Foundation, has seen explosive growth. Usage has skyrocketed with 17% of all developers using this latest iteration, a significant percentage for a relatively new release.

Other key finds from this survey include:

• Java/Jakarta EE 8 hits the mainstream with 55% adoption among the developers surveyed.
• Spring/Spring Boot continues to be the leading framework for building cloud native applications, but its share declined 13% (from 57% in 2019 to 44% in 2020).
• With the delivery of Jakarta EE 8 in September 2019, Jakarta EE starts to fulfill its promise of accelerating business application development for the cloud, emerging as the second place cloud native framework with 35% usage in this year’s survey.
• Since its announcement early in 2019, the adoption of Red Hat’s Quarkus has skyrocketed with 16% of developers now using the framework.
• The overall  usage of the microservices architecture for implementing Java systems in the cloud technically declined since last year (39% in 2020 vs 43% in 2019). This could potentially be due to implementers realizing that microservices are not a “one size fits all” solution, which is further borne out by the use of the monolithic architecture approach doubling since last year with 25% adoption reported in 2020.
• Even with the generally flat use of microservices year-over-year, there is still continued interest from the Jakarta EE community for better support for microservices in the platform. Combined with the decline in adoption of Spring Boot and the rise of Jakarta EE, the takeaway here may be that developers are looking past single vendor microservices frameworks in favor of vendor-neutral standards for building Java microservices.
• The adoption of Eclipse Che, an open source, Java-based developer workspace server and cloud Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for creating cloud native, enterprise applications on Kubernetes, has surged with reported usage growing from 4% in 2019 to 11% in 2020.
• Java 11 use has surged to 28% (20% in 2019). Sitting at 11% usage, enterprises are also adopting Java 14. Java 14 uptake may be due to the cloud providers are looking to stay on the latest and greatest
• Java 8 adoption has decreased to 64% (84% in 2019). This is an indicator that developers are finally moving away from Java 8 and Java 11 is replacing Java 8 as the default Java.

In a further demonstration of momentum for Jakarta EE 8, since  January 2020, the foundation has had 4 new Jakarta EE 8 full platform and 1 new Jakarta EE 8 web profile compatible implementations:

• Apusic from Apusic Kingdee (full platform)
• JBoss EAP runtimes from Red Hat (full platform and web profile)
• Tmax JEUS runtimes from Tmax (full platform)
• Primeton App server from Primeton (full platform)

In addition to Eclipse GlassFish 5.1, this brings Jakarta EE 8 to 12 compatible products including IBM’s Open Liberty runtime, Payara’s Payara Server runtime, and Red Hat’s WildFly runtime, all of which are listed here: https://jakarta.ee/compatibility/.

In addition to the 2020 Jakarta Developer Survey results, the Eclipse Foundation today announced a preview of the upcoming release of Jakarta EE 9, a critical step in the evolution of open source, cloud native Java for the enterprise. This release marks the final shift of the Jakarta EE platform from Java EE, as the use of namespace is evolving. Learn more here. By doing so, the Jakarta EE community has completed a significant, complex transition that will enable millions of Java EE developers to leverage open source Jakarta EE to migrate their mission-critical Java infrastructure to an open, cloud native world.

Industry response to the milestone release has also been robust, with multiple vendors having either announced or will be implementing Jakarta EE 9 components to support the Jakarta EE 9 namespace changes. Some of these include:

• Eclipse GlassFish 6.0 milestone release is available to download
• Jetty 11.0.0-alpha0 milestone release is available to download
• Apache Tomcat 10.0 M6 milestone release is available to download
• Payara Platform 6 milestone release coming in Q4 2020
• OpenLiberty 20.0.0.7 Beta release is available with basic Web application support to download
• TomEE 9.0 milestone release using Eclipse Transformer project tools will be available in Q3 2020
• WildFly 21 is planning a milestone release for fall 2020
• Piranha Micro p20.6.1 milestone release is available to download.

To celebrate this milestone release, the Eclipse Foundation is hosting a virtual event on June 23 at 11:00 EDT where developers, members, vendors and others can find out more and network with their peers to discuss the upcoming Jakarta EE 9 release. Interest parties can sign up here.

“In addition to significant interest in Jakarta EE and the community’s progress toward Jakarta EE 9, the Eclipse Foundation is seeing record growth in membership, as we added more members in Q1 2020 than any time since our inception,” said Thabang Mashologu, the Eclipse Foundation’s vice president, marketing. “This maps to the increased interest in the open source model worldwide.” 

Member Quotes

IBM

“I’m delighted that Jakarta EE 9 has reached its first milestone release after significant effort from the community, updating every project from the base Jakarta EE 8 release last year to create the flexible base we need for the next generation of Java applications that are deployed in containers to the cloud” said Ian Robinson, CTO IBM Application Platform. “IBM has been involved with Java for the whole of its 25-year history and we’re looking forward to providing early demonstrations of Jakarta EE 9, based on this milestone release, alongside the current MicroProfile support in Open Liberty.”

Oracle

"It’s phenomenal to see the first Milestone Release of Jakarta EE 9 and the Developer Survey results that demonstrate commitment to Jakarta EE", said Tom Snyder, VP of Engineering, Enterprise Cloud Native Java. "The survey findings reinforce what we're hearing from our customers - requirements to run existing enterprise Java applications AND Java microservices in cloud native Kubernetes environments. This is driving our investment in WebLogic Server support for Jakarta EE and Kubernetes, in Helidon releases leveraging Jakarta EE and MicroProfile, and Coherence CE and Verrazzano projects coming soon. We remain committed to work with the enterprise developer community to grow the future of Jakarta EE."

Payara

“As demonstrated in the 2020 Developer Survey results, the enterprise developer community is committed to the growth of Jakarta EE, mirroring the feedback of our customers needing to run production and containerized Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications. The Jakarta EE 9 Milestone Release is an important stepping stone in delivering Jakarta EE 9. It brings all of the Jakarta EE 9 APIs as milestone releases in the new namespace and demonstrates that the bulk of the work is complete - now we are entering a phase of testing and polishing for a final release later this year,” said Steve Millidge, CEO of Payara. “The Payara Team have been at the forefront of this work and we are really excited about the future final Jakarta EE 9 release and moving to deliver significant innovation with Jakarta EE 10.”

Red Hat

“Red Hat has been actively involved in the delivery of the Jakarta EE 9 Milestone Release because we see it as an important step towards the release of the platform”, said Mark Little, vice president, engineering at Red Hat. “It is critical that Jakarta EE remains a stable evolutionary platform for the industry in general and Red Hat customers in particular, with backward compatibility being the top priority. This milestone release provides developers an opportunity to provide feedback on compatibility and progress to date. Red Hat plans to deliver Jakarta EE 9 support through WildFly in the future.”

Tomitribe

“The Jakarta EE 9 milestone is the first glimpse of a new era that introduces a new namespace that will give us the freedom to update specifications, introduce new features, add new technologies, and  boost the pace of innovation,” said Cesar Hernandez, senior software engineer, Tomitribe.

About the Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable, and business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. The foundation is home to the Eclipse IDE, Jakarta EE, and over 375 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, and frameworks for cloud and edge applications, IoT, AI, automotive, systems engineering, digital ledger technologies, open processor designs, and many others. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit organization supported by over 300 members, including industry leaders who value open source as a key enabler for their business strategies. To learn more, follow us on Twitter @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn, or visit eclipse.org.

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