CNCF: Cloud-Native Ecosystem Expansion Continues
The overall size of the cloud-native developer community appears to be now growing at a rate of roughly 28% annually, noted Priyanka Sharma, general manager for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), during her keynote this week at the online KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 conference.
Citing research conducted by SlashData, Sharma said there are 6.5 million cloud-native developers as of February.
Based on a biannual survey of 17,000 developers, the SlashData report estimates that 1.8 million developers added cloud-native skills in the last year, with 60% of backend developers around the world now using containers.
The report further notes there are now 2.7 million developers employing Kubernetes and 27% of backend developers have used Kubernetes to manage containers, representing a 7% growth rate year over year. However, the report notes many more backend developers may be using Kubernetes without realizing it because the orchestration engine is often embedded within another platform.
In contrast, the report estimates there are now 4 million developers employing serverless architectures and cloud functions. However, the use of cloud functions and serverless architecture has remained relatively stable year over year, the report finds.
In general, Sharma says it’s clear containers and Kubernetes is gaining momentum, which in turn is giving birth to a vibrant ecosystem made up of a wide variety of complementary open source projects and commercial offerings. The CNCF has also certified more than 15,000 developers who have passed what Sharma describes as a challenging exam set up by the CNCF as part of the training courses it provides.
It’s not clear yet to what degree organizations are requiring certifications to fill IT positions just yet. In theory, at least, IT professionals with certified containers and Kubernetes skills should be able to command a higher salary. However, the downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on IT hiring patterns. Many organizations that have adopted Kubernetes are also investing in training their existing IT staff while on the job.
Longer-term, it’s also not clear whether Kubernetes will be managed by internal IT staff versus consumed as a service provided by either a cloud service provider or third-party IT services provider.
Regardless of approach, the pandemic is accelerating the rate at which application workloads are being migrated to the cloud, as IT organizations look to deploy more flexible and resilient applications that can be managed from anywhere. As part of those efforts, it’s only a matter of time before most IT professionals are exposed to containers and Kubernetes. That exposure will then naturally result in containers and Kubernetes also being more widely employed in on-premises IT environments, especially as hybrid cloud computing strategies continue to evolve.
In the meantime, IT professionals that gain containers and Kubernetes expertise are likely to enjoy higher measures of protection from being laid off during challenging economic times. Just as importantly, IT professionals who have container and Kubernetes expertise should find it much easier to find another position, should the need arise.
