The world of cloud technology and Kubernetes is evolving rapidly, and the discussions at this week’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA event offer a glimpse into the major trends and developments in the industry.

One of those emerging trends is the increasing need for more security around apps within Kubernetes, according to Dustin Kirkland (pictured, second from right), vice president of engineering at Chainguard Inc. and theCUBE guest analyst.

“With the amount that Kubernetes has been adopted, the next step is, ‘Now what? what sort of applications are running inside of it?'” he said. “And then having the introspection into those applications. Are they in a secure configuration? Are there some changes that need to be made in order to secure that? I’ve seen a number of challenges in that regard and been talking to a lot of people about it.”

Kirkland spoke with fellow analysts John Furrier (left), Rob Strechay (right) and Savannah Peterson (second from left) during the KubeCon day 1 wrap-up segment on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the promise of growth in cloud-native technology as security, collaboration and open source remain at the forefront. (* Disclosure below.)

The role of open source in creating business models

Open-source technologies play a crucial role in the cloud-native ecosystem. The event emphasized the importance of building communities around open-source projects and the role they play in validating market fit.

“Open source needs to be good enough that you have a community,” Strechay explained. “I think community is the key around it of either users and or developers who are contributing back into it. And then I think it goes beyond that, you build your value [and] that’s your business model on top of that. Then you actually can proceed to make money and be an operating viable company.”

In essence, companies that initially focus on building strong open-source communities can later develop value-added products and services on top of the open-source foundation, according to Stretchay.

The evolution of cloud tech and the proliferation of new business models will see the preservation of what works, such as valuable data and successful applications. These elements will be retained and enhanced to suit those business models and innovative applications, according to Kirkland.

“Now, there’s this explosion of applications that can just run when you can take for granted infinitely scalable storage, scalable networking, scalable compute,” he said. “We haven’t even said AI yet but, you know, the special processors and so forth.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE