To gather insights on the state of the Java ecosystem today, we spoke to nine executives who are familiar with the ecosystem. 

We asked experienced Java professionals, "What are real-world problems being solved by Java today?" Here's what they told us:

• Backend infrastructure is all Java. It does all the heavy lifting with business solutions, Big Data, and analytics. The banks run on Java.
• Embedded Java is underrepresented in most conversations. We are solving virtually all problems in billions of devices in industries like telecom, banking, and healthcare.
• All major systems filing patents, every step going through reviews, collecting fees, granting of trademarks are with Angular JS. ACA is all Java. Hub verification testing is powered by Java. 
• The most interesting thing we’re seeing is the alternate .NET platforms like Xamarin, .NET Core, and .NET Standard.
• Evolution is moving away from heavy J2E to lightweight. Android Studio is based on IntelliJ – the most popular IDE.
• The ability to write code for mobile applications that provide a great user experience.
• Enterprise-level microservices from the Java monolith to Java microservices.
• There's a lot of Java in the world. Solutions are packaged into the Java app – an agent focused on security. Automated prevention of attacks. We see interesting attacks and can see people going into the database. We can provide the key risk map and provide a targeted way to fix SQL injection in production into the application.

What real-world problems do you see being solved by Java? Is this increasing or decreasing?

And in case you're wondering, here's who we talked to:

• Kehinde Ogunde, Developer, Andela
• Eric Shapiro, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, ArcTouch
• Prem Chandrasekaran, V.P. of Software Engineering, Barclaycard
• Rajiv Kadayam, Senior Director of Technology Strategy, eGlobalTech
• Anders Wallgren, CTO, Electric Cloud
• Ray Augé, Senior Software Architect, Liferay
• Wayne Citrin, CTO, JNBridge
• Kunal Anand, CTO, Prevoty
• Tim Jarrett, Director of Product Management, Veracode