CNCF’s End User Technical Advisory Board has compiled new materials to promote best practices and simplify the adoption of cloud native technologies 

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America – November 14, 2024 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced the CNCF Technology Landscape Radar report looking at production readiness of multicluster application management and batch, AI, and ML computing technologies in the ecosystem. It also used the same data to identify gaps in the ecosystem and launched a set of Cloud Native Reference Architectures from the End User Technical Advisory Board to help address them. 

For the CNCF Technology Landscape Radar, CNCF partnered with SlashData to survey more than 300 professional developers using cloud native technologies, including members of CNCF’s End User Community, about their experience with multicluster application management and batch, AI, and ML technologies. The topic and technologies included in the survey were selected by the End User TAB, representing real issues that are top of mind for cloud native end users. The report evaluated technologies in each space based on their readiness for production use and placed them into one of four categories: adopt, trial, assess, and hold. CNCF Graduated technologies ArgoCD and Cilium were considered ready to adopt for multicluster application management. Apache Airflow and CNCF’s CubeFS and Kubeflow were also highly rated for batch, AI, and ML computing technologies.

“Since launching a year ago, the End User TAB has been working tirelessly to amplify the voices of end users and ensure their firsthand experiences and insights drive the future of the cloud native ecosystem,” said Taylor Dolezal, Head of Ecosystem at CNCF. “By identifying problem areas and creating streamlined approaches for overcoming challenges, the TAB is leaving organizations free to focus on technical innovation and creating amazing products.”

While conducting the Technology Radar, the team gathered insight into the difficulties of managing certain aspects of the ecosystem. These challenges stem primarily from the complexity of adopting multi-cluster, multi-cloud, or hybrid deployments and include issues like cost, observability, security, and cluster lifecycle across tools, providers, and environments. It also identified a need for more standardization and interoperability and regular up-leveling of skills to pace with the latest developments in cloud native technology. More information about these challenges can be found in the Ecosystem Gap Report.

To address ecosystem gaps and provide practical guidance and examples for building cloud native applications, the Reference Architecture working group, a collaborative effort within the End User TAB, has launched its first Reference Architectures – Scaling through Platform Engineering at Allianz Direct and Scaling Adobe’s Service Delivery Foundation with a Cell-based Architecture. These real-life architectures, used in large-scale production settings, include how they came to be to provide organizational context essential to understanding the architecture. 

The CNCF End User Community comprises more than 150 organizations that meet regularly to share adoption best practices and feedback on project roadmaps and future projects for CNCF technical leaders to consider.

CNCF End Users gather this week during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2024 in Salt Lake City. Join upcoming events, including the inaugural KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India, December 11-12 in Delhi, and KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025, April 1-4 in London. 

Additional Resources

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 800 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

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