The continued evolution of Kubernetes

Kubernetes is at the heart of enterprise IT. Peter Smails at SUSE asks what’s next for the world’s most used container platform

 

The demands of running enterprise applications across hybrid and multi-cloud environments have made containerisation central to modern IT strategy. To meet these needs, organisations everywhere have turned to Kubernetes, an open-source platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and operation of application containers.

 

Originally developed by Google a decade ago, it is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and has moved from its early role as an experimental development tool to become one of the most important technologies in enterprise IT.

 

Today, Kubernetes is the second-largest open source project in the world after Linux and is the primary container orchestration tool for 71% of Fortune 100 companies. Looking ahead, industry figures suggest that 95% of global organisations will use containerised applications by 2029, with Kubernetes certain to be at the heart of this trend.

 

At its core, Kubernetes is a container orchestration system. It manages the lifecycle of containerised applications and services, ensuring they run efficiently and reliably. Its primary role is to facilitate both declarative configuration and automation for application services to simplify application deployment and management across various environments.

 

 

Assessing the trends

But where are adoption trends heading, and how do organisations expect to develop their use of Kubernetes in the future? Recent industry research carried out among the Kubernetes community has helped to reveal the current state of play and how those responsible for implementing and managing Kubernetes see its future panning out.

 

At a foundational level, it’s clear that Kubernetes is now central to many enterprise environments. Nearly 40% of respondents run all their live applications on the platform, with a further 31% using it in pre-production. For many organisations, Kubernetes has now moved from its initial role as a test bed into the ‘mission-critical’ category of enterprise technology. In other words, organisations are no longer merely exploring Kubernetes; they now rely on it to run their most important applications.

 

Over a third (38%) of users rely on Kubernetes because it helps deliver faster development cycles, while 31% value its ability to scale effortlessly. This combination of speed and control is transforming the way teams build, deploy and manage software, particularly where businesses need to iterate quickly and deploy across diverse environments.

 

Crucially, Kubernetes is also enabling organisations to rethink their infrastructure strategies. While on-premises deployment is still common, 39% of those surveyed plan to scale Kubernetes across multiple clouds. A further 14% already run workloads across three or more cloud providers. This growing preference for vendor neutrality and platform flexibility reflects a clear desire for resilience, not just in terms of uptime, but also in the ability to pivot, evolve and optimise costs as business needs change.

 

None of this happens in isolation. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of respondents highlighted the importance of the Kubernetes community and ecosystem in supporting their success. This includes a range of capabilities, including troubleshooting, updates, tooling and integration. As a result, community-driven collaboration remains a key ingredient in overall operational resilience, especially in high-performance environments where downtime or misconfiguration can have significant consequences.

 

Bring all these factors together, and Kubernetes is building its role within core IT infrastructure. Simultaneously, the conversation around technology is starting to shift. It’s no longer a question of whether to adopt it, but how to operationalise it effectively, particularly around issues such as security, cost management and complexity. 

 

This is all taking place in the context of businesses where cost planning and optimisation are under the spotlight. IT leaders understand that to scale efficiently, drive value and justify spending without compromising performance, Kubernetes has a key role to play.

 

That’s not to say Kubernetes doesn’t bring its own challenges. In particular, it’s essential to build an approach that effectively manages it across multiple cloud environments, backed by stringent security and observability, robust support, architectural consistency and cross-platform resilience. 

 

In addition, AI is intersecting with orchestration, opening the door to predictive insights and intelligent automation. These developments promise further efficiency gains, but they also demand careful evaluation. 

 

As always, the challenge isn’t just to adopt new tools. It’s to ensure they deliver measurable, long-term value. But, in the case of Kubernetes, the future looks bright.

 

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Peter Smails is General Manager Enterprise Container Management at SUSE

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and dem10