This year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gathering was focused on building more robust and inclusive communities around the cutting-edge ideas and projects currently bubbling out of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

Notably, there were announcements outlining some of these breakthrough ideas as well — an example of which is WebAssembly (Wasm), a new cloud-native instruction format for stack-based virtual machines.

During the event, industry analysts John Furrier, Lisa Martin and Savannah Peterson, co-hosts of theCUBE, SilicionANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, talked with industry executives and experts in the developer community about open-source and cloud-native trends, including container security and edge infrastructures. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three key things that you might have missed during the event:

1.) It might be mainstream now, but cloud-native is only getting started.

Several technologies are intrinsic to cloud-native computing, and chief of them is Kubernetes. The containerization tool continues to attract developer support and attention and is a major underpinning for companies that have shifted to cloud-native, according to Priyanka Sharma (pictured), executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

The CNCF is currently managing more than 140 projects. And a resource pool that has been invaluable to the successes experienced there has been the “maintainer group.”

“I would definitely say that the underlying basis of all these projects, and I brought that up in my keynote, is the maintainers,” Sharma said. “And I think the maintainer group is the talent that keeps thriving and growing. The load on them is very heavy though.”

The event was full of news in areas such as container security and continuous delivery. And the key commonalities across all of the speeches and announcements from the event were consolidation and innovation, according to Sharma.

“I think it’s marked proof that we have awesome technologies that are useful to lots of people around the world,” she said. “And I hope this continues to increase. With the wide basket of project portfolios, that’s what I hope to see. CNCF itself will continue supporting the maintainers with things like conformance programs, which are really essential when you have people building products on top of your projects.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Priyanka Sharma:

2.) Developers and apps rule, as more companies become ‘software companies.’

Catalyzed by the pandemic, companies have swiftly realized the necessity of digitizing themselves. What was once a nice-to-have in digital transformation has now become an imperative requirement to staying competitive and delivering value.

“It’s a fantastic time in our industry. All companies are becoming software companies,” said Scott Johnston, chief executive officer of Docker. “That means they need to build new applications. That means they need developers to be productive and to be safely productive. And this wonderful CNCF ecosystem is right in the middle of that trend, so it’s fantastic.”

As developers and data specialists take center stage in the emerging economy, so does equipping them with the right tools to deliver. And with tens of millions of developers loyal to Docker’s toolset — which has become something of a de-facto standard — the company is laying a strong groundwork for the shift toward entire infrastructures as code, Johnston pointed out.

This is evidenced by the success of Docker Extensions, which opens developers up to third-party tools that can be accessed within Docker itself.

“Extensions are part of that story in that developers have multiple tools. They want the choice in order to be productive, and Docker is part of that, but it’s not the only solution,” Johnston said. “And so Docker Extensions allow the monitoring providers and the observability, and if you want a separate Kubernetes stack, extensions allow all of that flexibility.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Scott Johnston:

3.) Straightening out and securing the software supply chain.

Cloud-native is on-premises, on the edge, and in the cloud … and many household names –such as Home Depot, Ford Motor Co. and ING Group — were present at various points during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon to give their perspectives on becoming software-driven. And, as the enterprise embraces cloud-native, a big story emerging concerns security and the much-discussed software supply chain, according to Furrier.

“The big story is security. Software supply chain, to me, was the number one, consistent theme in almost all the interviews,” he said. “The CD Foundation mentioned they had 16,000 vulnerabilities identified in their code base. They were gonna automate that. So, again, that’s the top story: The growth of open source exposes potential vulnerabilities with security.”

The show also revealed several pleasant surprises, according to theCUBE analysts, one of which was the striking emphasis on wholesome community collaboration. An example of this was inviting students from Detroit to participate in the conference, according to Peterson.

“They brought in Detroit’s students to come and learn, which is just the most heartwarming story out of this entire thing,” she said. “And I think it’s just the authenticity of everyone in this community and their passion. Even though I know it’s here, it still surprises me to see it in the flesh.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with theCUBE’s John Furrier, Lisa Martin and Savannah Peterson:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA event. Neither Red Hat, the main sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE