DEVOPSdigest

The majority of organizations surveyed (97%) are gaining business benefits from Kubernetes — including growth in market share and increased profits, according to The State of Kubernetes 2023 from VMware.

The report states that nine out of 10 (90%) agree that cloud native technology, including Kubernetes, is transforming the way the business operates. And 91% agree that Kubernetes has benefited the entire organization, not just IT.

Business benefits cited include:

■ Increased IT operator efficiency (64%)

■ Increased developer productivity (60%)

■ Demonstrating IT as a revenue driver, not just a cost center (37%)

■ Growth in market share (25%)

■ Creation of new revenue-driving customer experiences (21%)

■ Increased profit margins (20%)

In addition, 98% said Kubernetes delivers operational benefits, including:

■ Improved resource utilization (50%)

■ Enables the process of moving to the cloud (36%)

■ Reduced public cloud costs (33%)

The most popular tool types included:

■ Data security, protection and encryption (53%)

■ Platform monitoring and alerting (53%)

■ Software and package management (46%)

Other key findings of the report include:

Kubernetes Challenges Persist

The report found that the top challenges organizations have encountered when deploying and managing Kubernetes include:

■ Inadequate internal experience and expertise (58%)

■ Difficulty integrating with current infrastructure (50%)

■ Lack of app mobility (21%)

Security Is Top Concern

Security remains a dominant concern for teams deploying and managing Kubernetes, according to the report. Nearly all (97%) of respondents cite security concerns related to using Kubernetes, including misconfigurations/exposures (55%), applying policy consistently across clusters and teams (42%), unpatched CVEs in the Kubernetes distribution (42%) and securing container images in a CI/CD pipelines (40%).

Nearly all respondents report that it is worth investing in paid support or services for Kubernetes, with security topping the list.

DIY Kubernetes Usage Drops

Developers building Kubernetes on their own decreased from 28% in 2020 to 16% in 2023. This significant drop highlights that respondents don't have unique needs at the infrastructure layer.

Additionally, 84% of companies don't see value in owning Kubernetes themselves and prefer to let someone else, such as vendors, to deal with assembling and keeping Kubernetes up-to-date.

Service mesh adoption is high

The report states: "One tool we wanted to know more about was service mesh, so we added a separate question on the technology. Most organizations (92%) have some type of service mesh deployed, underscoring its growing importance for enterprise application connectivity. We see an even split between use of open source and enterprise-class options, each selected by 57% of respondents, while 27% use a DIY or custom implementation."