Red Hat announced a multi-stage alliance to offer customers a greater choice of operating systems to run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Kubernetes is surrounded by a larger ecosystem of more than 1,600 adjacent projects and solutions that aim to add value to core container orchestrator software, from Operating System (OS) capabilities, networking and storage interfaces, to security, monitoring tools and others.
Due to the diverse nature of Kubernetes and its complexity by design, approaches to implementation and management vary, from tailored-made DIY projects that can add to the overall cost and operational burden, to over-opinionated and rigid, vendor and location-specific solutions. Seven years after its inception, Kubernetes is a technology set still maturing.
Spectro Cloud has published results from their first annual Kubernetes adoption survey, conducted by Dimensional Research, to provide both businesses and the broader ecosystem with a real-world reference point of best practices as it relates to Kubernetes deployment and management. The report was based on data collected from 165 senior IT professionals across various industries. Here's what was uncovered.
Finding 1: Facing Challenges with Kubernetes
The overwhelming majority (98%) of IT executives report that they face challenges with Kubernetes and coordinating the related ecosystem of integrations. Kubernetes still has tremendous untapped potential to offer to the market, especially as it becomes more accessible to the masses and is coordinated more efficiently across different environments.
77% of IT executives surveyed state they have been using Kubernetes for more than 2 years, while only 40% report having Kubernetes-based applications in production for at least two years. This contradiction is interesting, indicating an explosion of production environments waiting to be deployed, especially as the relevant tools and management solutions evolve.
Finding 2: Running Kubernetes across diverse environments
There has been a substantial growth in the diversification of target environments; from private data centers and bare metal environments, to public clouds including managed Kubernetes offerings, to edge deployments. The freedom of choosing where to deploy and manage workloads has further accelerated diversification of Kubernetes environments.
With that being said, it is no surprise that 77% of IT executives surveyed stated that it was "vital" to be able to run Kubernetes across these diverse environments, however acknowledging that it can make management much harder. This explains why 98% of the respondents that reported challenges with Kubernetes stated that their top concerns with Kubernetes are multi-cluster, multi-environment, multi-distribution coordination, linking services and maintaining security updates. This again drives home the importance for IT executives to conduct deeper exploration into best practices for Kubernetes management as no current standards exist here and the proliferation of Kubernete clusters is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years.
Finding 3: Having Flexibility and Usability
Perhaps the most pertinent datapoint that summarizes where we are today with Kubernetes is the fact that "66% of respondents do not believe you can have both flexibility and usability." This might be also reflected by what IT teams are looking for (visibility, availability, governance and access controls), and what DevOps teams expect (optionality to run apps anywhere, fast customization, and support of versatile application-specific stacks).
For Kubernetes to truly reach its full potential, we need to find a modern way to think about Kubernetes management, where developers and IT teams both get what they are looking for. The industry as a whole has not yet cracked the code on the "perfect way" of deploying and managing Kubernetes.
Industry News
Snow Software announced a new global partner program designed to enable partners to support customers as they face complex market challenges around managing cost and mitigating risk, while delivering value more efficiently and effectively with Snow.
Contrast Security announced the launch of its new partner program, the Security Innovation Alliance (SIA), which is a global ecosystem of system integrators (SIs), cloud, channel and technology alliances.
Red Hat introduced new security and compliance capabilities for the Red Hat OpenShift enterprise Kubernetes platform.
Jetpack.io formally launched with Devbox Cloud, a managed service offering for Devbox.
Jellyfish launched Life Cycle Explorer, a new solution that identifies bottlenecks in the life cycle of engineering work to help teams adapt workflow processes and more effectively deliver value to customers.
Checkmarx announced the immediate availability of Supply Chain Threat Intelligence, which delivers detailed threat intelligence on hundreds of thousands of malicious packages, contributor reputation, malicious behavior and more.
Qualys announced its new GovCloud platform along with the achievement of FedRAMP Ready status at the High impact level, from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).
F5 announced the general availability of F5 NGINXaaS for Azure, an integrated solution co-developed by F5 and Microsoft that empowers enterprises to deliver secure, high-performance applications in the cloud.
Tenable announced Tenable Ventures, a corporate investment program.
Ubuntu Pro, Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for secure open source and compliance, is now generally available.
Mirantis, freeing developers to create their most valuable code, today announced that it has acquired the Santa Clara, California-based Shipa to add automated application discovery, operations, security, and observability to the Lens Kubernetes Platform.
SmartBear has integrated the powerful contract testing capabilities of PactFlow with SwaggerHub.
Venafi introduced TLS Protect for Kubernetes.