Jakarta EE, the Eclipse Foundation’s enterprise Java, has gained converts while usage of Eclipse’s MicroProfile microservices architecture for Java has fallen, according to Eclipse’s annual Jakarta EE Developer Survey Report for 2023.

Since arriving September 2022, Jakarta EE 10 usage has grown to 17% of the enterprise Java developers surveyed, according to the report, released September 19. Eclipse also found that 17% of the respondents run Jakarta EE 9 in production, up from 14% in 2022; 28% currently run Jakarta EE 8 in production, vs. 24% in 2022. More than 60% of respondents have migrated to Jakarta EE or plan to do so within the next six to 24 months.

Jakarta EE ranks second as a framework for building cloud native applications, with 53% using it, behind Spring and Spring Boot at 66%. The use of Jakarta EE for cloud-native apps remained the same percentage as in 2022, while Spring and Spring Boot rose 9%. Eclipse’s MicroProfile, in third place, saw its share decline from 30% in 2022 to 26% this year. Both Spring and MicroProfile rely on some Jakarta EE specifications.

The 2023 Jakarta EE Developer Survey Report also revealed the top five community priorities for Jakarta EE among respondents:

1. Better support for Kubernetes.
2. Better support for microservices.
3. Adapt to Java SE (Standard Edition) innovations such as records and virtual threads.
4. Better support for serverless.
5. Improved support for testing and a faster pace of innovation.

Conducted from mid-March to late-May, the survey tallied responses from 2,203 participants, with the goal of helping Java ecosystem stakeholders better understand requirements, priorities, and perceptions of enterprise developer communities. A bit more than half of participants identified as developers, followed by architects, team leaders, development managers, and others.

Eclipse took over stewardship of enterprise Java, formerly known as Java EE, from Oracle in 2017. The Jakarta EE platform and profile specifications range from web and core profiles to batch, concurrency, and data specifications. Jakarta EE now is positioned as bringing enterprise Java to the cloud.

Other findings of the 2023 Jakarta EE Developer Survey Report:

• 28% of respondents will develop cloud-native applications to replace some or all existing services.
• 23% report that more than 80% of their Java systems are currently deployed in the cloud.
• The Jakarta EE community wants to adopt innovations from Java SE (30%).
• 24% will modify existing applications for migration to the cloud. Some 22% already run Java applications in the cloud, up from 18% last year.
• The top five cloud platform providers among respondents were Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, and IBM Cloud.