DEVOPSdigest

As part of DEVOPSdigest's 2020 predictions, industry experts offer predictions on how containers and related technologies will evolve and impact DevOps and business in 2020. Part 2 offers some additional container predictions.

Start with 2020 Container Predictions - Part 1

Start with 2020 DevOps Predictions

DEVOPS MOVES TOWARDS STANDARDIZATION

While DevOps traditionally has meant different things to different people, where they would pick and choose various elements of DevOps that best apply to their unique scenarios, the industry is starting to see a common set of building blocks. This consolidation is happening on both the tooling and processes sides, helping to create more consistency in DevOps approaches. The use of microservices is critical in this regard. Cloud-native technology helps eliminate the duplication of services through its built-in modularity — as more teams move to adopt microservices, they can build services that can be used across an organization as opposed to individual teams and specific applications. The extensibility of microservices is key in serving as the foundation of DevOps building blocks ushering in standardization. Kubernetes is a good example — it offers a strong and consistent platform supported by a very large community that helps organizations take advantage of the customizability and adaptability of cloud-native architectures. It can work in any environment, both on-prem and in the public cloud. So it has created a common platform that can be used by development, operations, and security teams alike.
Wei Lien Dang
VP of Product and Co-Founder, StackRox(link is external)

PORTABLE STATEFUL APPS

One of the most impactful predictions we expect to see in the coming year is the rise of portable stateful applications. With the growth of Kubernetes enabling portability for stateless apps by providing for common infrastructures across organizations, we expect to see developers realize fairly quickly how to capitalize on portability for stateful apps as well.
Niraj Tolia
CEO, Kasten(link is external)

UPDATING CONTAINERIZED RUNTIMES

As Docker adoption continues, developers are struggling less with "works on my machine" incidents but they continue to see issues with updated containerized runtimes in a timely matter. That's a big part of container security concerns. Because of this, in 2020, I anticipate seeing more vendors working to close this gap with automated solutions that let organizations update their Dockerized-runtimes as often as they update their code.
Bart Copeland
CEO and President, ActiveState(link is external)

SERVICE MESH

Service mesh will become a standard approach to run cloud-native apps and microservices. We'll see an increase in these environments.
Avishai Sharlin
Division President, Amdocs Technology(link is external)

While service mesh technology is in its early stages in comparison to Kubernetes, we're starting to see new requirements for how these tools are going to be used. As customer deployments of service mesh technologies get more complex, the applications it supports will increase in complexity and criticality.
Ali Golshan
CTO and Co-Founder, StackRox(link is external)

DATA SCIENTISTS DRIVE OPERATIONALIZATION OF KUBERNETES

Data scientists will drive operationalization of Kubernetes. Kubecon North America was crawling with data scientists that were grudgingly trying to learn how to use Kubernetes in their work. This is a population that just needs platform and infrastructure technology to work. The fact that they have real projects driving business value AND don't have a history of considering themselves infrastructure experts is going to change what the Kubernetes installation and management ecosystem looks like.
Tina Nolte
VP of Product, Spectro Cloud(link is external)

MARKET OPPORTUNITY: SIMPLIFYING KUBERNETES

The complexity of Kubernetes (K8s) will create market opportunities for simplicity. While the complexity of K8s will become less visible thanks to abstraction by main cloud and PaaS vendors, it won't disappear. K8s can introduce new complexities into complicated compute environments and therefore a significant market opportunity will emerge for companies that can simplify K8s-based deployments for large enterprises.
Brian Kelly
Head of Conjur Engineering, CyberArk(link is external)

SYSTEM INTEGRATORS OFFER CONTAINER SERVICES

System Integrators will finally implement containers practices under their Digital Transformation or Cloud offerings. Containers are now used in production by 90 percent of businesses, but offerings from systems integrators haven't kept up. In 2020, we'll see more of these service organizations rolling out container offerings to support their clients' needs.
Murli Thirumale
Co-Founder and CEO, Portworx(link is external)

Still more predictions to come, including 2020 DevSecOps Predictions next week.