CNCF Sees Record Kubernetes and Container Adoption in 2021 Cloud Native Survey

Record number of organizations are using or evaluating Kubernetes as the technology goes mainstream and users start to move up the stack

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Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Feb 10, 2022, 12:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced the results of the 2021 Cloud Native Survey. The survey, now in its sixth year, found that the usage of Kubernetes is continuing to grow and reached its highest level ever, with 96% of organizations using or evaluating the technology. Kubernetes has been fully embraced by large enterprises and is even growing in emerging technology hubs, like Africa, where 73% of respondents use Kubernetes in production.

The 2021 Cloud Native Survey received 3,829 responses overall and reflects the views of more than 38 times as many respondents as the first report in 2016. In addition, this year's survey is more global than ever in scope, drawing an increase in responses from six continents. Finally, for the first time, the 2021 survey report incorporates production data from member organizations Datadog and New Relic, as well as independent developer analyst SlashData. This data provides a fuller picture of the realities of production usage, and we plan to incorporate similar information in future surveys for a more robust outlook on the cloud native landscape.

Key findings from the report include:

Container adoption and Kubernetes have gone mainstream – usage has risen globally, particularly in large organizations. SlashData reports that there are 5.6 million developers using Kubernetes worldwide, representing 31% of all backend developers.
Kubernetes is going "under the hood" – more organizations are leveraging managed services and packaged platforms. According to CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk, there is a growing void in understanding that Kubernetes and containers are essentially a package deal. Datadog reports that nearly 90% of Kubernetes users leverage cloud-managed services, up from nearly 70% in 2020.
Organizations are moving up the stack – companies are adopting less mature projects to tackle more advanced challenges like monitoring and communications. Monitoring tool Prometheus, for example, saw a 43% overall increase in adoption for the last six months of 2021, according to New Relic.

"Kubernetes adoption among the ever-expanding cloud native community is approaching 100%, meaning those investing in cloud native are strongly bought in and excited for the future," said Priyanka Sharma, executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. "Our data also demonstrates how ubiquitous cloud native is, whether it is being deployed in-house or as a managed service. I believe 2022 will be a banner year for emerging areas of cloud native like edge, observability, and security as container infrastructures continue to mature both on the surface and under the hood."

The raw survey data can be downloaded in its entirety on GitHub.

Methodology

The 2021 Cloud Native Survey was separated into two parts due to a large number of questions. Part one looked at containers and Kubernetes and was conducted between April and June 2021 with responses from 2,302 individuals. Part two, conducted between August and November 2021, covered cloud native technologies such as service mesh, serverless, and storage, as well as CNCF's other projects, and received 1,527 responses. To provide a more robust picture of how organizations are using cloud native technologies, the report incorporates production data from member organizations, including Datadog's 2021 Container Report and New Relic's O11y Trends Report. It also pulls in data from 'The State of Cloud Native Development' report, which was developed for CNCF by SlashData in 2020 and 2021.

Organizations interested in working with CNCF to give a more accurate picture of the adoption of cloud native projects should reach out to [email protected].

Additional Resources

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation
Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry's top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 500 members, including the world's largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Katie Meinders
The Linux Foundation
[email protected]

SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation