Unlocking the Gate to Digital Transformation – Research Study

Enterprise IT Operations All-In on Kubernetes Adoption

Kubernetes, first released as an open-source technology in July 2015, has become the de- facto standard for container orchestration, widely utilized as an underlying building block in public cloud services and as the foundation for many born- in-the-cloud applications. Digital transformation has driven the adoption of Kubernetes as an operating environment beyond public clouds into commercial enterprises, as the fundamental platform enabling agile development with microservices.

Despite its benefits, traditional enterprise customer adoption into full production was – for many years – limited. Kubernetes is complex to adopt and manage, requiring new skills and a different operating model. And like any new operating platform, Kubernetes (and the containers it orchestrates) needs systems management tools to enable reliable operation. Container Management Platforms (built from open source but integrated and maintained by commercial software firms and public cloud services) have now provided the needed scaffolding to enable production operation at scale. Which is why, seven years after initial release, there is high interest among the enterprise community regards the state of adoption.

In June-July 2022 the firm surveyed over 14,000 North American and European enterprise customers to determine the status, challenges, trends, and future issues for customers taking Kubernetes to full production in an Enterprise environment. More than 300 customers responded, representing enterprises ranging in size from 100 employees (SMB) to over 5000 (Large Enterprise), across a wide range of industries. More information on the demographics of the surveyed population can be found in the appendix to this document.

After the survey, Evaluator Group researchers interviewed select survey respondents to gain additional insights about successful (and challenging) adoption strategies. This report details the 12 key findings from both the survey and interviews.