At this week’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA conference, the winds of change are blowing strong.

The event brought together the sharpest minds in the tech world to ponder the future of cloud-native technology and its progression alongside artificial intelligence. During theCUBE’s day two insights panel, industry analyst Jo Peterson (pictured, second from right), vice president of cloud and security for Clarify 360 and principal analyst for ClearTech Research, set the stage for an exploration of the insights that have characterized KubeCon NA.

“Fifty-six percent of businesses have more than 10 Kubernetes clusters, and 69% run Kubernetes in multiple clouds or other environments, with 80% expecting their scale to grow,” Peterson said. “I think that it becomes a real conversation about money. Open source is not free necessarily. Or you might get some of it free, but you still have to secure things.”

Peterson spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier (left), Savannah Peterson (second from left) and Dustin Kirkland (right) at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. As a part of the discussion, Peterson offered insights into the future of cloud-native technology and its inseparable partnership with AI. (* Disclosure below.)

The AI buzz

The resounding theme at KubeCon was clear — everyone wants more AI.

“I want more AI love. I need AI love,” Jo Peterson said. “I need AI use cases. I need to know more.”

While the mainstage presentations are undoubtedly valuable, the analyst panel highlighted the significance of the “hallway track.” This emphasizes the value of informal conversations and networking in shaping the direction of cloud-native and AI technologies.

“I was talking to one of the chairs of the tracks about the CNCF tracks here, and he said the most important track is the hallway track,” Savannah Peterson said, pointing out that open, valuable conversations happen in the hallways.

Developers at the helm

Kubernetes developers and those working on cloud-native infrastructure are building the momentum in the right direction, according to Kirkland, who likened it to a snowball rolling downhill. The developer community is increasingly focused on creating efficient code, packaging it in containers and streamlining the CI/CD pipeline.

“I spent time with the developers writing applications that run inside of a container,” Kirkland said. “It was interesting to hear some of the developer efficiencies that they are seeing and feeling, part of it around AI.”

DevSecOps also play an important part in the challenge of breaking down silos between infrastructure and DevOps teams, according to Jo Peterson. There is still a lack of tools that seamlessly bridge both environments. The key takeaway? Collaboration is essential, and AI might play a significant role in making it happen.

“This is mainstream stuff that we’re seeing,” she said. “And we’re seeing containers occupy a larger percentage of not only infrastructure, but the budget. From a percentage standpoint, [DevOps are] not necessarily getting all the tools that they need to do what they need to do. And I think that there’s still this silo situation going on.”

Containers versus VMs

Another topic of debate was between containers and virtual machines. On-premises environments, bare metal and VMs still have their place, according to Furrier. The choice between these technologies often depends on factors such as budget, skill sets and comfort levels. It’s clear that the industry hasn’t settled on a one-size-fits-all solution.

“AI will help on some of these challenges around where to put the best practice or run book, whatever you want to call it,” Furrier said. “This has come up as automating some of the playbooks.”

The conversation shifted to AI security and the use of open source to build foundational models that can be privatized. The integration of AI into the cloud-native ecosystem is a complex challenge that is sure to reshape the industry, according to Jo Peterson.

“I think that we’re going to see lots of AI security come into the fold the next time we all meet and are here,” she said. “I think there’s going to be all these cool little companies that pop up about some form or fashion of governance. That’s governance internally, governance externally. Sovereignty is going to be a thing.”

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 Inc. and CNCF, the main sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE