Kubernetesless is just someone else’s Kubernetes

This was originally in my newsletter, which you should subscribe to.

For all the interest in Kubernetes, there's not actually many apps running on it right now.?Gartner's Wataru Katsurashima estimates?that "by 2027, 25 percent of all enterprise applications will run in containers, an increase from fewer than 10 percent in 2021." When I look at that, it makes me think that, I don't know, there's at best 15% of apps running in kubernetes this year. (Also, the estimate is containers, not specifically Kubernetes.)

The enthusiasm for Kubernetes keeps climbing and over the next few years we’ll see if it’s up to the task of running all those plain old enterprise apps at banks, governments, manufactures, grocery stores, pharmaceutical companies, and so forth. As more organizations use Kubernetes, we’ll see the demand for more tools to help manage and run it. You see?that tools use reflected in our recent State of Kubernetes survey.

At the beginning of the 2010’s there was a lot of enthusiasm for using OpenStack as a basis for both public and private clouds,?but it moved from a general infrastructure layer to a specialized for telcos and for use in China. Building and running an IaaS layer proved to be difficult. I suspect it was much easier to use public cloud, using containers (before Kubernetes), and the simplest path of doing nothing and continuing to just use 3 tier’ed apps in VMs.

Kubernetes is at a similar moment in time. For years we’ve heard of how complex it is - it’s?the new bag of sharp of knives. Surveys show this year after year.

To address that, I suspect we’ll see a lot of interest in paying for tools as the chart from our recent State of Kubernetes Survey shows:

Also, as with OpenStack, I think ad the years got by we’ll see less interest in building and managing your own kubernetes. Organizations will instead use the Kubernetes “distros” that are in public clouds, or, that are managed by someone else. Sure, there’ll be plenty of edge cases in…edge, harhahaha…har… Not unlike OpenStack as well.

Here’s a chart?from Dynatrace’s user base showing that movement to public cloud:

The big cloud providers that run Kubernetes will get a significant take of the money in the market, as will those who sell tools to manage Kubernetes. Maybe there’ll be an equilibrium between public and private, but I suspect private will always be much smaller.?

My other hope is that we’ll?return to the idea of a PaaS: a layer that sits on-top of whatever infrastructure (IaaS) you have (here, Kubernetes) and, basically, hides it and automates how application developers use it. Using?a PaaS is well understood and has a long track record. The only mystery is why you’d do otherwise.

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