Containers have become a key building block for some of today's most sophisticated applications under development -- from artificial intelligence to the edge. These encapsulated application units require orchestration, and Kubernetes is the vehicle being employed to accomplish this. At the same time, recent studies show, it takes time and education to align Kubernetes-based applications to enterprise requirements.
Kubernetes-based container deployments are on the rise, according to a recent analysis of data from 7,000 backend developers, as reported in the most recent State of Cloud Native Development Report[1] developed for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation [2](CNCF) by SlashData[3]. The study finds that Kubernetes adoption soared during the 2020-2021 time period – to at least 5.6 million developers, representing a 67% increase within a year's time. This group now represents 31% of all backend developers.
The CNCF/SlashData report also finds that edge computing is the leading use case for container or Kubernetes-based deployments. Among edge developers only, Kubernetes usage increased in the last 12 months by 11 percentage points to 63%. Along with edge computing, the types of applications in which containers and Kubernetes are being applied represent some of the most cutting-edge types of projects of this era, including the following:
- Edge computing (76% employ containers, 63% use Kubernetes)
- Quantum computing (65%, 59%)
- Haptic feedback (61%, 56%)
- DNA computing / storage (69%, 56%)
- 5G (64%, 54%)
- Blockchain applications other than cryptocurrency (68%, 52%)
- Computer vision (68%, 45%)
- Conversational AI (61%, 44%)
- Robotics (56%, 42%)
At the same time, more education is required to impress the potential advantages of Kubernetes among IT professionals, the CNCF/SlashData survey suggests. "Kubernetes seems to exhibit a distinctive positive trend within the cloud native space, and there