KubeCon is only a few years old, but the conference dedicated to Kubernetes’ open-source platform for better managing containerized software applications has grown exponentially. According to a 2018 survey, more than 8,000 people attended last year’s event, which has become the flagship conference hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, with the majority being first-time attendees. This year, that number is expected to be higher as more developers and even big-name companies focus on Kubernetes and cloud-native computing architectures.

Kubernetes, for its part, has gained a lot of attention, especially in the multicloud era. As adoption for containerized applications grows, the importance of having a tool like Kubernetes to deploy and automate operations have become more apparent.

According to the 2019 Container Adoption Survey by Portworx Inc. and Aqua Security Software Ltd., 87% of information-technology professionals are already running container technologies.  

To understand just how big Kubernetes has gotten, there are more than 2,300 active contributors to the Kubernetes repository and over 84,000 commits, according to its GitHub page. 

As work with Kubernetes moves out of the experimentation phase and into real-world deployments, KubeCon 2019 is poised to be a breakthrough year for the standardization of Kubernetes within enterprise computing environments.

Joining SiliconANGLE Media co-founder John Furrier (@furrier) in Palo Alto, California, to discuss the upcoming conference is Vicki Cheung (pictured), co-chair of KubeCon and an engineering manager at Lyft Inc. Cheung shares her expectations for this year’s KubeCon, how Kubernetes is addressing the rising challenges of cloud-native computing, and the importance for enterprise use cases (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Furrier: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has been successful getting vendors into the conference. You’re setting the agenda. Tell us what’s going on. 

Cheung: We’re seeing the maturity of the community coming together; the adoption growing exponentially. Two years ago, if you surveyed the room of adoption, you’d maybe get a hand. You’re seeing a trend — today maybe half the room would raise their hands

Furrier: What’s interesting to me and our reporting — Kubernetes can be that unifying point. You’re seeing that de facto, accelerating production use cases. Will that be a focus?

Cheung: Definitely. Last year there were a lot of end-user talks from early adopters like tech giants. This year, we’re seeing more enterprise use cases, and that’s driving a lot of the content. We’re seeing talks around security, governance, development packs, and focus on scaling operations.

Furrier: What can people expect this year? 

Cheung: Bryan Liles and I, we have the tracks from the past few years. We generally stick to them because they’re pretty good. But we see distribution across the tracks change. This year, operations is a big track because we’re seeing more adoption there. I think that track has been a main focus. Also, customizing Kubernetes is another one, as use cases become more sophisticated and we’re seeing more enterprise adoption.

Furrier: Same as before but different weights?

Cheung: Before, it would be more early adopter, and now people are going into production. 

Furrier: In terms of the industry, you went public with Kubernetes at Lyft on day zero — are there any projects you’re seeing of what’s going to come from the community?

Cheung: Helm continues to grow. There’s also a lot of focus on open-policy agents as security is growing. Another area I’m personally interested in — I’m happy to see it popping up more this year — is developer experience and productivity. Adopting cloud-native architecture comes with a lot of benefits but also challenges. Projects like Telepresence and Tilt are coming up more, and app development.

Furrier: What about developer sentiment?

Cheung: Depends on who you ask. Generally, people are excited to move in this direction; people are more flexible in how they develop. But there’s a lot of questions, and these new projects help fill those gaps.

Furrier: What’s your take on this year’s submissions? You have a unique perspective — it’s a user-focused show but a lot of vendors participating in the community.

Cheung: Typically, you see some numbers published in blog numbers; I don’t know them all. But for operations, I think acceptance was less than 10%. Not as competitive in recent years, but as people move to deploy Kubernetes on their own, it’s a hot topic.

Furrier: What’s the community view on vendor participation?

Cheung: It’s been great for the community. I wouldn’t have expected companies like Microsoft to be as active in the community. Instead of the tech giants sucking out the energy into their private ecosystems, it’s been the other way around. 

Furrier: You’re saying they’re pushing more towards open source, not pulling out of it?

Cheung: Yes, not obvious from the beginning, but glad to see it happening.

Furrier: Let’s talk about the enterprise. Chief information security officers have the same reaction — Kubernetes is so good for bringing in cloud-native without much disruption.

Cheung: Earlier pitches — Kubernetes enables flexibility in deployments. As people adopt at scale, they’re seeing cost savings. In general, as you move to a community standard, it helps your developers a lot because they no longer have to build in-house, as Lyft had to do prior to Kubernetes.

Furrier: Lyft has been involved in donating the Envoy project, and it was really popular. Is it going to happen again? 

Cheung: EnvoyCon will be happening right before KubeCon and will be even more popular this year. Running Envoy at scale and atop Kubernetes will be hot topics as more people integrate multiple technologies.

Furrier: What dark horses are out there that will surprise people?

Cheung: I think there’s going to be a few new open-source projects launched, and I think there will be a lot of, more than usual, interesting people for attendees to meet.

Furrier: I hear the original members will be there?

Cheung: I don’t know if I can confirm or deny!

Furrier: What’s the most important story to pay attention to this year?

Cheung: Kubernetes is ready. It’s been building up hype in recent years — we’ve seen the adoption, but this is truly the year I see a lot of enterprise end-user use cases.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Cloud Native Computing Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CNCF nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE