While many are simply trying to keep up with the rapid pace of digital transformation, a few in the cloud space are constantly looking ahead and building the roadmap for innovation in the next frontier of tech.

“You really want infrastructure to be as boring as possible, capable and secure, and now give a lot more control over to the application developer. Right now, it’s largely based on Kubernetes … that will connect into virtual machines,” said Lew Tucker (pictured), vice president and chief technology officer of cloud computing at Cisco Systems Inc. For Tucker, creating more stable connections, both digitally and in the open-source community, is key to reaching the next level of cloud innovation.

Tucker spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event in Austin, Texas. With nearly a decade of experience supporting network solutions at Cisco and years as vice chairman of the board at the OpenStack Foundation, Tucker had some wisdom to share on where he predicts cloud and container orchestration platforms like the Kubernetes container orchestration management system will take the industry. (* Disclosure below.)

Consistency through Kubernetes

Tucker is adamant that the next phase of cloud computing will see a boom in multicloud operations that allows enterprises to retain options while they maximize cloud benefits. “They don’t want to have a completely different environment. What they really want to see is a consistent environment across which they can deploy applications,” he said.

Providing those options is the driver behind platforms like OpenStack — open-source cloud computing software — as well. “One of the hard things for enterprise developers is that the pace is changing so fast. How do they try out some of the newer technologies that still can be connected back into the existing legacy systems? That’s why I think that we’re seeing the role for OpenStack,” Tucker said.

Kubernetes’ compatibility with OpenStack is enabling enterprises to maintain those consistent environments by providing the security policies and authentication services needed to offload heavier workloads. Kubernetes is the key to overall acceleration of tech development in the cloud space, offering enterprises support through its backup capabilities and open source simplicity, Tucker explained.

“When you’re developing an application, if you want it to be resilient, you want several instances of that application running, and you want traffic to be load-balanced across it. Kubernetes provides that level of orchestration,” he said.

Looking ahead, Tucker sees a full realization of the potential in “internet of things” on the horizon — and the proliferation of multicloud will be integral to its growth. “If I want to use a machine learning service, and I want to use it up in the cloud, I need to connect it back to those devices. Multicloud is really about addressing how do you develop applications that run … in the cloud, on the edge, in an IoT device,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco Systems nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE