As the cloud native landscape grows bigger and bigger, there are new technologies emerging: the role of software abstractions, automation and artificial intelligence, to name a few. This makes things very challenging for companies to navigate such a complex landscape, and it can often feel overwhelming.

With this complexity in mind, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation created a community called the Cartografos Working Group, which provides tools to adopters and end-users to navigate the CNCF landscape and the wider cloud native ecosystem. The group has been creating a Cloud Native Maturity Model to help organizations learn more about the cloud journey and where they are along the process.

Danielle Cook (pictured, left), vice president of marketing at Fairwinds Ops Inc., and John Forman (pictured, right), associate director, container lead, at Accenture PLC, are part of the Cartografos Working Group. They spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA event, about the Cloud Native Maturity Model. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following content has been condensed for clarity.]

Tell us about the Cloud Native Maturity Model you guys have been working on.

Cook: We put it together and have been working since February to [focus on] ‘what is cloud native maturity and what are the stages you need to go through to achieve maturity?’ So … now we have this great model that people can use to take them from … [having] no idea what cloud native is to the steps they can take to actually be a mature organization.

Was it just more people trying to get more cloud native? They want to move faster? Was it confusing? What are the problems that you were solving?

Forman: It’s just so confusing what we do … so we just put together a model instead that we can reuse … as a good reference architecture. So it’s a five-scale model from one to five. Most clients today are at a two … but our job is getting to a five where that could be optimized and really rock and rolling.

Can you guys share your data on where people are? 

Cook: So the data is actually anecdotal from our experiences at our different companies. But … we’ve made it so that you can self identify. But we’ve also recognized that you might be at stage two for one application but five for another application. So just because you’re on this journey doesn’t mean everything is in stage five.

What are some of the themes around the maturity model that you guys can share? What’s the process?

Cook: One of the things we did when we were putting it together was we realized that there were themes coming out amongst the maturity model itself. So we realized there’s a whole people layer — there’s a whole policy layer, process and technology. So this maturity model does not just look at ‘Hey, this is the tech you need to do.’ It looks at how you introduce cloud native to your organization, how do you take the people along with it, what policies you need to put in place, the process. So we did that first and foremost.

But one of the things that was super important to all of us was that security was ever present throughout it. Because as everything is shifting left, you need to be looking at security from day one and considering how it’s going to happen and role out from your developers all the way to your compliance people. It’s super important and one of the themes throughout.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE