Introduction
Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, is a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and provides commercial support for various technologies that are part of the CNCF ecosystem. As an active part of the community, we take the pulse, analyse and share insights on personal and commercial use of cloud native technologies, leveraging the Ubuntu user base and our proven experience working with open-source software and solving enterprise complexity. We contribute the data back to the community, along with our own analysis and the insights of industry experts in the form of commentary. The goal is to help improve the cloud native technologies to best address the needs of end users and their organisations.
Key takeaways
- Hybrid vs multi-cloud: the reality behind the adoption
More than 83% of respondents told us they’re using either hybrid or multi-cloud. In the last year alone, the percentage of respondents who did not use hybrid or multi-cloud dropped from 22.4% to 16.4%. This time, Tim Hockin discusses the reality behind that adoption: "People often build a straw man of hybrid or multi-cloud, with the idea of one giant mesh that spans the world and all the clouds, applications running wherever capacity is cheap and available. But in reality, that's not at all what people are doing with it. What they're actually doing is using each environment for just the things they have to use it for." -
Kubernetes on bare metal
The question of where to run applications is an interesting one. 14% of respondents said that they run everything on Kubernetes, over 20% said on bare metal and VMs, and over 29% said a combination of bare metal, VMs, and Kubernetes. As highlighted by Ihor Dvoretskyi, this distribution shows how the flexibility of Kubernetes allows organisations to run the same type of workloads everywhere. Looking back at last year's highlight, where Kelsey Hightower stated that bare metal was a better choice for compute and resource-heavy use cases such as interactive machine learning jobs, it seems that the tune is changing. Actually, as running Kubernetes is becoming more accessible, Alexis Richardson speculates that organisations would further adopt Kubernetes on bare metal if they knew it was possible. -
Security is still everyone's concern
This comes as no surprise: 38% of respondents suggest that security is the most important consideration whether when operating Kubernetes, building container images or defining an edge strategy. Keeping clusters up-to-date is a definitive best practice to solve security issues. However, according to Jose Miguel Parrella, it is not as embedded within the strategic-thinking IT infrastructure group as one could expect. Today, it is more of a Day-30 discussion that only occurs within the small team of Kubernetes maintainers of every organisation. Combined with the fact that only 13.5% of people reported that they’ve “mastered” security in the cloud native space, it is clear that organisations have some room to grow when it comes to properly adopting and managing Kubernetes in production. -
An app store for operators
When asked if they would trust an operator built by an expert, more than 50% of our respondents said yes. This makes sense considering that the skills gap is a major issue for organisations. However, the provenance and accessibility of operators need to be addressed to mitigate the main concerns of organisations adopting new technologies, and in particular open-source solutions. As the automation of operations continues to grow, finding a safe place to get the necessary tools is becoming more and more important. In both reports, Karthikeyan Shanmugam and Alexis Richardson spoke about the idea of an "App Store" where people can publish and consume operators, similar to Charmhub. -
What is in store for the future?
Despite the obstacles, Kubernetes adoption is consistently growing. It is only fair to try and think about what the future holds. For Ihor Dvoretskyi, the high-level goals — improving maintenance, monitoring and automation, and infrastructure modernisation — are likely to stay the same in the years to come. However, use-case related evolutions are to expect, in particular in the AI/ML and data platforms space. And as the platform evolves to support more diverse tools, the goals of its users will evolve with it.
About the survey
The Kubernetes and cloud native operations survey used to collect the data for this report ran in late November 2021 after Kubecon North America. Nearly 1300 people responded to the survey. We collected expert 3rd party commentary on the results from the public clouds, ISVs, and from an expert in the financial industry who also co-chairs the Operator Framework at the CNCF. We’re happy to share this information with you and look forward to running the survey again, later in the year!
Who is using Kubernetes and cloud native technologies?
1. Respondents by job role
I am best described as:
1216 out of 1279 people answered this question
The majority of Kubernetes users are people that are building platforms or interacting with platforms, as Kelsey Hightower noted last year, and this year is no different. They might wear several hats, but all cloud native users aim to add value to their business by leveraging those technologies. Here’s what our experts had to say:
There are differences between the words you use to describe your job, versus what your job actually is. This will be one of the areas that will change the most. The skills will not change dramatically, but the jobs that people do will evolve. And the way the people describe those jobs will change too.
Alexis Richardson, Founder and CEO, Weaveworks
Clearly, the people who are most interested in Kubernetes are the people who have to operate software across clusters. K8s is a cluster operations API. It allows us to think about a cluster as a unified thing, and then describe what we want on that cluster. And it takes care of the details. So it makes a lot of sense to me that architects and DevOps/SREs are the ones who topped the charts here. Those are groups that think about how to operate software cleanly in an organisation, across multiple clouds. Can this be done? Kubernetes gets us a lot closer to saying “Yes” on a question like that.
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder and CEO, Canonical
2. Respondents by industry
My company is in the following industry:
1243 out of 1279 people answered this survey
One of the positive surprises from the 2021 report was the ranking of financial services in the second place of the most represented industry, as noted by Ken Sipe and Kelsey Hightower. FinServ is adopting Kubernetes while navigating the security and compliance implication of its integration. This year, Education is the lucky second, with the Software/technology industry still holding the reins. Here’s what Tim Hockin had to say:
This gels with what I hear from people, they're spending an enormous amount of time and energy on IT, which is that whole first category. IT is generally a cost centre. Folks would like to spend less money on that. Modernizing is part of it, but as a goal on its own this very much lines up with what we see in the industry. Typically modernising means adopting containers and cloud native solutions, switching from bespoke technologies to CNCF tools; switching from legacy monitoring systems to Prometheus; or switching from vSphere to Kubernetes.
Tim Hockin, Principal Software Engineer, GCP
Cloud native: goals, benefits, and estate size
3. Which technology goals are most important?
Which goals are most important to you and your team? Choose 2.
1276 out of 1279 people answered this question (with multiple choice)
Karthikeyan Shanmugam rightfully highlighted last year that the top results were consistent with the typical concerns of the biggest share of the audience of the survey. Actually, the top reasons cited are very representative of SRE's concerns: 77.8% of SREs/DevOps selected improved maintenance, monitoring and automation as one of their two choices for this question. It is consistent with what we are seeing this year. Automation keeps coming back as a big theme, as it helps to lower operating costs and ties into faster time to market, which is definitely a good business driver.
I do not expect the high-level goals to change too much in the years to come. People are sticking to their habits and their top priority will mostly be about running software on top of the reliable, stable infrastructure—they actually do not want to have to care about the infrastructure. It reminds me of the old joke that says "A good sysadmin doesn't do anything because they have set everything properly. A bad sysadmin has to work a lot as they probably have to fix something broken all the time.". If I think of this question with regards to problem spaces and tools I can definitely say that I expect this to change. Two years ago, the ecosystem was taking the most interest in serverless technologies and that is still the case today. But today I also see a lot of emerging interest in AI/ML and data platforms on Kubernetes. This is mostly because of the platform's growing maturity. Kubernetes started as a platform for stateless applications but has grown to support stateful too. So I can imagine that as the platform evolves to support more diverse tools the goals of its users will evolve with it.
Ihor Dvoretskyi, Senior Developer Advocate
If you are just getting started with cloud native technologies, I'd advise you to double down on automation and modernization: this has always been the most important benefit. If you are starting your cloud native journey thinking about removing vendor dependencies, you're missing the opportunity of improved feature velocity.
Jose Miguel Parrella, Principal Program Manager, Office of the Azure CTO
4. What are the top benefits of cloud native technologies for businesses?
Kubernetes and cloud native technologies unlock innovation for organisations and allow them to achieve their goals. The benefits of cloud native technologies vary, depending on their usage and the maturity of the organisations using them. Last year, elasticity and agility, resource optimisation and developer productivity occupied the top spots amongst our users, regardless of their job group. This year, the results are different and our experts' opinions also highlight how diverse those benefits really are.
Which goals are following do you consider the most significant cloud-native benefits? Choose 2.
1271 out of 1279 people answered this question (with multiple choice)
If you are doing open source, you should look at it just like as if you were buying software. When you buy software, you're paying an institution to have the highly technical people on staff. When you do open source, you might need to hire those people yourself or pay a company like Canonical to do that for you.
Cost of Ownership is not to be misconstrued with the maintenance costs that every software should and does have. It really is less about lower infrastructural costs and more about lowering risk. I can take the risk completely off the table because I have the software and if I need to, I can totally rebuild what I need.
Ken Sipe, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Edward Jones
People really benefit from a faster time to market and agility, but it's also interesting to note how the composable nature of containers has introduced open source to a whole new set of people and organisations.
Jose Miguel Parrella, Principal Program Manager, Office of the Azure CTO
I'm a big believer in "don't fix things that aren't broken". So if you look at microservices as a panacea, then you're going to be disappointed. Rather, if you look at it as a means to solving a specific set of problems that many folks have—but not everybody—then you will be better off. It's a way of organising teams and of empowering Conway's Law in some sense. It's a law for a reason. Microservices provide a good way of doing that. But if you think it's going to take a bad application and make it good, then you're going to be disappointed. Or if your application is unreliable, or it follows the big ball of mud architecture, then you're also going to have a hard time.
Tim Hockin, Principal Software Engineer, GCP
5. What is the definition of “hybrid cloud”
How do you define a “hyrid cloud”
1232 out of 1279 people answered this question
We see more and more people getting the definition of hybrid cloud right. Mark and Ken provide a forward-looking perspective, now that this has become common knowledge: