At Replicated, we closely trackhappenings in the cloud native space given that we use cloud nativetechnologies to deliver and manage software on-prem. (We like theon-prem term because it neatly sidesteps the tiresome on-premise vs.on-premises debate.) That’s why some of the findings in the latest Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) surveycaught our eye. They highlight that we seem to be at a point where lotsof computing is sticking to on-prem even as it transforms to cloudnative.
If you’ve hung around the computer industry for a while, you’ve probably observed acouple of things. The first is that the industry tends to go throughcycles. The second is that each new cycle is different in fundamentalways from the one that came before.
CNCF surveys over the years (2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017)illustrate these patterns nicely in that they track changes to bothwhere computing is happening and how it’s happening, both on-prem andelsewhere. One quick caveat. Don’t read too much into the absolutenumbers; over half the respondents are from software/technologyorganizations and about the same number are members of the CNCF End UserCommunity. Therefore, they’re almost certainly more aggressive adoptersof cloud native technology than the average company. Nonetheless, it’sreasonable to take the general trends—which are consistent with other survey data—as applicable to a broader set of technology consumers.
Let’s start with the where.
On-prem remains a key enterprise IT footprint
Jump back ten years or so and computing was re-centralizing. The new form of utility computing wasdifferent from computing dominated by mainframes and other types of BigIron servers. But it was nonetheless widely viewed as a computing wavethat would inexorably pull in computing from the periphery into a smallnumber of global public cloud providers. The common storyline peddled byauthor Nick Carramong others was that computing was on a trajectory to be dominated by astandardized compute utility just as electricity was after large powerplants and hydroelectric dams took over from locally generated factorypower.
It would take time, but many saw an inevitable destination where large service providers dominated.
The CNCF datatells a more multifaceted story. Public cloud usage did climb in 2020;64% are on public clouds compared to 62% the year before. However, theon-prem/private cloud category shot up much more—from 45% in 2019 to 52%last year. Both hybrid cloud and multi-cloud, as defined by the CNCF,also have significant chunks (36% and 26% respectively), but it’s hardto compare to prior years because distinguishing the two categories canbe difficult in surveys and the CNCF didn’t ask about multi-cloud lastyear.
What should we makeof this? One conclusion is that it’s a heterogeneous world wherecomputing takes place in different places for different purposes. This has been the case for a very long time in IT. The other result is that on-prem computing is here to stay and it’s growing. This growth is inpart related to edge computing which distributes computing capacity andstorage out closer to users, services, and devices. And this is trueeven among a population of companies on the cloud native forefront.
The rise of the container (everything else cloud native, and yes on-prem too)
The surveys also tell us the way in which organizations are using infrastructure is changing.
Evenamong this cloud-savvy crowd, the level of container use in production(92%) is a bit startling. That’s 4X the percentage who the CNCF says had containers in production use in 2016 and a steady increase from 84%in 2019 and 73% in 2018. The number of containers run by thesecompanies continues to climb as well. 23% are running more than 5,000containers while the number running less than 250 continues to dwindle.
Deployingcontainers at this scale can’t be done in isolation. We see thisreflected in the high (83%) uptake of Kubernetes for production cluster management; another 8% use the platform but haven’t put it intoproduction yet.
There’salso evidence that these organizations are adopting cloud nativepractices more broadly as part of their production workflows in the CNCF 2020 survey.For example, 63% use Helm to package their Kubernetes applications, farmore than any other approach—including managed Kubernetes services. 82%of respondents use CI/CD pipelines in production. Jenkins remains themost common CI/CD tool although cloud native tooling like TektonPipelines and Argo are starting to put in an appearance. 27% now use aservice mesh in production even though that’s a quite recent (andrapidly evolving) technology. Almost all (95%) use monitoring andlogging; 74% use tracing. The majority run these on-prem. More than halfcheck in code multiple times a day and 29% release at least daily.
Containers were originally intended to be stateless and that was something of adefining characteristic of early Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings and their associated application patterns such as twelve-factor apps.Indeed, Kubernetes users run stateless applications, with 22% runningstateless only. A significant majority, 71%, autoscale their statelessworkloads—about the same as last year.
However, 55% run production stateful applications in production. This gives a sense of how important the development of stateful Kubernetes features like persistent volumes has been to its success as an enterprise software platform.
That’s not to say there aren’t any challenges associated with using containers.
Complexity remains a challenge
One such challenge is complexitywhich has stayed stubbornly high over the years. This year 41% cited itas a challenge, which is actually a bit higher than the numbers goingback to the CNCF’s 2017 survey. Just a few percentage points but the lack of movement has to be seen as a bit discouraging.
Progresswith respect to more focused technology areas is mostly better. For example, security remains fairly high—32% call it out as a challenge—but security ranks high in just about every survey that looks at challenges, barriers, and concerns and it’s well down from 40% last yearand 44% in 2017.
Technology is (relatively) easy, people are hard
The other big challenge remaining iscultural changes associated with development; it ties with complexityfor the top challenge this year. This is perhaps less surprising giventhat culture change is always slow to take root in an organization. Nonetheless, it’s a reminder that transformation isn’t just about (or maybe even mostly about) technology. The good news is that those taking the survey over time at least recognize that dealing with changing platforms, application patterns, and processes isn’t just about buying a new tool.
Want to learn more? Check out the resources page for podcasts, webinars, and case studies. Here’s another blog you may find interesting Kubernetes Infrastructure vs. Kubernetes Application Management.