The wrap-up of last year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe brought forward a few key themes. The first theme was that platform engineering is real and funded at the startup company level and by the chief information officer. The second theme was that artificial intelligence will be at every phase.

The third was that Kubernetes has reached the late majority with its popularity and would need to solve day two issues. This year’s iteration of the event, from March 20 to 22, will be a chance to further the education and advancement of cloud-native computing.

“As KubeCon continues to grow and focus more on the CloudNativeCon aspect and deployment use cases of Kubernetes, we can expect to see many exciting developments as projects move from the sandbox phase to incubating and eventually graduation,” said Rob Strechay, managing director and lead analyst with theCUBE Research. “The first day, Tuesday, is especially important as it features project working group ‘days’ and lightning talks. With so many great projects to choose from, it will be difficult to decide which to attend.”

Those areas of interest and more will be explored by theCUBE Research industry analysts as they talk with industry professionals about what comes next. Join theCUBE from March 19 to 22 for our exclusive coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, live on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Check out what’s in store for theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon EU conference:

Kubernetes market size poised to expand rapidly

In 2021, Allied Market Research reported that the global container and Kubernetes security market was valued at $714 million in 2020, projecting that it would reach more than $8 billion by 2030. Markets N Research landed on a similar projection for 2030 last year — a $7.8 billion market size.

During last November’s KubeCon/CloudNativeCon North America 2023 event in Chicago, Priyanka Sharma, executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which hosts the event, referenced a McKinsey & Company report stating that open-source, cloud-native projects were driving more than $4.4 billion in economic impact. Kubernetes had likely “realized its Linux moment,” with more than 220,000 development contributors and trillions of downloads involved, according to Sharma.

In a post-event analysis of last year’s KubeCon NA, Jason English, partner and principal analyst at Intellyx B.V., revealed that the conversation evolved from Kubernetes’ role in cloud-native development to a broader focus.

“Discussion turned from the ubiquity of the software container orchestrator Kubernetes as the heart of cloud-native development to addressing a vast ecosystem of projects and vendors, which in turn are enabling applications and data to become more distributed and independent from any particular underlying cloud or on-premises infrastructure,” English said.

The latest in cloud-native technologies on display

Every year at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, new perspectives emerging from a vast ecosystem of projects and vendors make the event the place to be, especially as generative AI has entered the scene in a big way. Kubernetes on Edge Day, BackstageCon, Kubeflow Summit, Cloud Native Wasm Day, Data on Kubernetes Day, Cloud Native AI Day, Observability Day and Platform Engineering Day are also all worth attention, according to Strechay.

“One project to keep an eye on is OpenTofu, the open-branched version of Terraform,” he added.

OpenTofu moved into general availability in January. The platform is intended to make it possible to create scripts to automatically set up virtual machines and other cloud resources, which removes the need for developers to configure each asset individually.

“This OpenTofu GA release is the culmination of four months of worldwide community efforts across five continents, from hundreds of contributors and over five dozen developers,” said Sebastian Stadil, a core OpenTofu contributor and chief executive of Scalr Inc., a startup that provides infrastructure management software. “Now that we have a stable release out, the community can look forward to a quick succession of long-awaited features and enhancements.”

Other projects have seen big funding rounds in recent months, including ScaleOps Labs Ltd., which said in December it had raised $21.5 million via two funding rounds. That funding is intended to boost the development of what it says is the industry’s first fully automated and cloud-native resources orchestration platform for Kubernetes deployments.

Meanwhile, major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services Inc., have made clear that they view Kubernetes as being a central gateway into a public cloud platform. Generative AI will only further fuel the technology’s growth in the enterprise, Barry Cooks, vice president of Kubernetes at AWS, told theCUBE in December.

“It’s gone to a level of maturity where the amount of dependence on Kubernetes is now huge,” he said. “The Kubernetes API is how people want to get into the cloud and run things. It is the front door to the cloud now.”

Trends from KubeCon/CloudNativeCon 2023

Following last year’s KubeCon/CloudNativeCon NA, Jason English was able to pinpoint a number of trends worth keeping an eye on. Among them were the customer stories focused on improved delivery speed, application scalability and system resiliency, even amid what were once insurmountable failures.

“I was most impressed by the personal connections that drive innovation in this ever-expanding space,” English said. “There’s a deep sense of involvement and genuine warmth among contributors and end users in the CNCF community, which is borne out of a culture of knowledge sharing and acceptance one wouldn’t expect from an engineering-focused trade organization.”

So, how is cloud-native computing impacting the emerging world of intelligent data apps? Plus, what’s the latest when it comes to emerging trends in microservices architectures and container orchestration with technologies such as Kubernetes and Prometheus?

Such discussions will be explored during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU event. TheCUBE will provide full coverage of the event to capture all the breaking news and provide analyst-driven commentary. You can follow theCUBE’s wall-to-wall coverage for firsthand insights.

Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at theCUBE Research, recently spoke with Stu Miniman, senior director of market insights and hybrid platforms at Red Hat, about what to expect during KubeCon. They discussed the significance of AI and machine learning, co-located events focusing on platform engineering, and observability and emerging discussions on edge computing.

Here’s the complete video interview:

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU event, from March 20 to 22. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU event, theCUBE Research analysts will talk with industry professionals about news and product announcements. Stay tuned for our complete guest list.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event. No sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE