The CNCF, Kubernetes, and Its Community – A Love Story in Facts and Numbers

Table of Contents

• What’s It About.
• What Do You Benefit From Reading This Article?
• What Is CNCF, What Is Kubernetes, and What Is the Kubernetes Community?
• How Do the Numbers in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation Report Look Right Now?
• What Conclusions Can Be Drawn from the Findings?
• What About the CNCF and Kubernetes Community?

What’s It About.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) published a report titled ‘State-of-Cloud-Native-development’ in December 2021. In it, you’ll find exciting numbers around the Kubernetes container orchestration system, development within the Cloud Native landscape, and the Kubernetes community.

What Do You Benefit From Reading This Article?

Lengthy reports are what they are – long. We want to present you the most essential information, facts, and figures. Short and to the point.

What Is CNCF, What Is Kubernetes, and What Is the Kubernetes Community?

While we don’t think you’ve ever heard of CNCF, Kubernetes, or the Kubernetes Community if you have, here are brief explanations for you:

Cloud Native Computing Foundation – CNCF for short. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation was launched in 2015 by the Linux Foundation. The CNCF promotes projects around cloud computing, microservices, and container virtualization. 

On the CNCF website, the Foundation describes itself:

CNCF currently has 740+ members. These are made up of companies of various sizes. If you want to see who these members are, have a look at the CNCF Landscape.

In the landscape, you will also find an overview of the 120+ open source projects that the CNCF supports.

Kubernetes – K8s for short. Google released the open-source container orchestration system in 2015, and it is, from our point of view, currently THE lighthouse project of the CNCF. In any case, it is the project that is making giant waves at the moment. 

How rapidly Kubernetes has developed in recent years, you can see below in this article with the facts and figures from the latest report of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. 

Kubernetes Community – Behind every great technology are people. In the case of K8s, it’s the Kubernetes Community. Meetups and user groups are organized around Kubernetes worldwide, constantly pushing the open-source project forward. 

Below we have listed a few of the most important channels of the Kubernetes Community for you:

• Kubernetes Community Forum
• Kubernetes Twitter Channel
• Kubernetes on GitHub
• Kubernetes on Stack Overflow

But now it gets a little tricky. In the Kubernetes Community, several smaller communities have taken on a particular topic.

One community that we at anynines specifically support is the Data on Kubernetes Community. Also known as DoKC. They are  particularly close to our hearts, as we have been working on automation for data services in the cloud, our a9s Data Services.

The mission of DoKC is to drive a steady exchange of patterns and considerations for building and running data-centric applications on Kubernetes.

Learn more about DoKC on their website or in our interview with DoKC’s community leader and CNCF Ambassador “Birthmark” Bart Farrell.

Follow Bart on Twitter at @birthmarkbart.

How Do the Numbers in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation Report Look Right Now?

But now, back to the actual topic: The CNCF report. As promised – short and to the point. 

Nineteen thousand developers participated in the survey developed for CNCF by Slash DATA.

The main findings of the report are: 

• Compared to the previous year, 2020, the population of cloud-native developers worldwide has grown by 0.3 million to a total of 6.8 million by the end of 2021. 

• Of the 6.8 million – 4.6 million use container orchestration tools, and 4 million developers use serverless platforms — an intersection of 1.8 million use both.

• For the same period, however, there has been a reduction in the number of backend developers working in the context of cloud-native technologies. The percentage has dropped 3% from 44% in 2020 to 41% in 2021. 

• Larger enterprises and experienced developers are driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies, particularly in North America and Western Europe. 

• By the end of 2021, Kubernetes was already used by a total of 5.6 million developers, according to the CNCF report. A year earlier, 3.9 million developers were using K8s. So within 12 months, 67% more users have been added. 

• 31% of all backend developers were using Kubernetes in 2021. That’s up 4% from 2020.

• Edge computing is the sector with the highest adoption rate of Kubernetes. 

What Conclusions Can Be Drawn from the Findings?

In summary, a vast rise in the number of developers using K8s is clear to see. A user growth of 67% within 12 months is truly remarkable. With that said, I don’t think the peak has been reached yet either. Kubernetes will continue to hold some surprises for us in the coming years.

At the same time, cloud-native technologies will become more and more popular within enterprises. They will have a significant impact not only on the future of IT but also on everyday life.

What About the CNCF and Kubernetes Community?

Here are some short facts from the CNCF annual report 2021.

In addition to Kubernetes, the CNCF has the patronage of other projects such as Prometheus, Envoy, ContainerD, to name a few of the 100+ projects.

142,000 active contributors drive these projects. During the past year, CNCF membership has grown from close to 600 members at the end of 2020 to almost 800 members.

So, the CNCF can boast the increasing popularity of its managed cloud-native projects and many companies supporting the Foundation as members.

With a relaunch of the Kubernetes Community Days – or KCD – program, CNCF gives the K8s community a framework to better connect through self-organized events, thereby learning from each other and advancing Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies.

In addition to community-organized events as part of the Kubernetes Community Days program, CNCF hosts annual KubeCon & CloudNativeCon conferences in North America, Europe, and China.

Unfortunately, some of the events could only be attended virtually due to the pandemic, which created some challenges for attendees and sponsors. People are social beings, and getting to know each other in person makes for a much fuller experience than virtual meetings.

Since fall 2021, however, the conferences can be experienced virtually and physically.

We hope for a great year for everyone in the cloud-native universe and beyond. We’ll definitely see you at one of the official conferences or community meetups.

If you want to dive deeper into the reports mentioned in this article you can find the links here:

• CNCF report: State of Cloud Native Development 2021
• CNCF report: Annual Report 2021