Introduction

The adoption of Kubernetes continues to accelerate. However, the consensus is that approaching the deployment of Kubernetes shouldn’t be done recklessly and needs to follow a calculated process. We recently hosted a session with customers where we asked Forrester Principal Analyst and Vice President, David Bartoletti, to walk the audience through the reasons he believes Kubernetes has exploded. Simply put, he says it is all about the cloud and the pressure enterprises are under to capitalize on the scalability, flexibility, and efficiency a well-architected cloud-first infrastructure can deliver. The current economic mood is challenging and complicated – those organizations that can leverage cloud, insights, and agility will be best placed to survive the turbulence of the next two years.

Cloud powers the new, connected economy, and organizations are rethinking how they design apps and business processes with operational consistency. So, where does Kubernetes factor in this? Kubernetes allows faster innovation on core open source platforms at a lower cost. Its ability to deliver speed, consistency, and scale across multiple use cases are fundamental in its success.

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Why Kubernetes?

If we look at the numbers, according to Forrester, there’s been an increase in Kubernetes and containerization developer inquiries of 130 percent from 2018 to 2019. This includes 61 percent of enterprises that are already using containerization in their pipelines, with a further 52 percent using a container service in the public cloud. The numbers themselves have doubled since 2016 – yet there is a general feeling that Kubernetes has just left the starting blocks.

In an enterprise context, Kubernetes has become a top-six infrastructure priority, with 32 percent of companies placing it on their “high priority” list and nine of out ten companies listing it on their “moderate priority” list. Most organizations that use container platforms do so to develop and deploy new apps and to modernize existing apps, building their own container infrastructure.

But, in action Kubernetes is exceptionally powerful. Today Kubernetes’s primary use is to build mostly stateless cloud-native apps to support the customer need to deliver at speed and scale. Most companies, particularly in the finance and insurance sectors, consider containerization for three reasons: rehosting infrastructure efficiency, virtualization substrate management and repacking existing monoliths.

We are seeing several emerging use cases, which include a mashup of containers for artificial intelligence and machine learning on bare metal, distributed edge computing, and modernizing core business apps with APIs and microservices. To paraphrase David Bartoletti – companies are using container networks to modernize even their oldest and crustiest core business apps.

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