{"id":14889,"date":"2024-05-02T08:05:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T08:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1406260"},"modified":"2024-05-02T08:05:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T08:05:30","slug":"as-kubernetes-turns-10-experts-predict-the-future-of-cloud-native","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=14889","title":{"rendered":"As Kubernetes turns 10, experts predict the future of cloud-native"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In June, <\/span>Kubernetes<\/span><\/a> celebrates its tenth birthday. The system is now so widely used by hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide to scale their applications to meet demand it\u2019s hard even to remember a time before it existed. But there was a time when other options were available, and I even remember using some of them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this relative vintage, many large developers teams and companies are still yet to embark on a migration to Kubernetes, or are in the middle of the process. But to many developers who like to live on the edge, 10 years of a technology is a long time, and maybe to them, Kubernetes and the whole \u201c<\/span>cloud native<\/span><\/a>\u201d ethos even feels a little \u201ctired.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At <\/span>KubeCon EU<\/span><\/a> in Paris in March, perhaps the biggest and best KubeCon in Europe I\u2019ve attended, I asked European cloud-native thought leaders to consider what the future of cloud-native could hold \u2014 or what could replace it.<\/span><\/p>\n

More control of hosting<\/b><\/h2>\n

Alongside Kubernetes, the three big cloud<\/a> hosts (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) were the catalysts for cloud-native computing. One of their initial big selling points in the past was flexible, usage-based billing with the promise to save those with spiky demand scalable workloads that saved money. But that didn\u2019t necessarily turn out to be true for everyone, and moving back to more traditional hosts was a noticeable trend at KubeCon, with three of the large European hosts (<\/span>OVHcloud<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Scaleway<\/span><\/a> from France and <\/span>CIVO<\/span><\/a> from the UK) with a large presence on the show floor.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Civo\u2019s CTO, Dinesh Majrekar, mentioned that Broadcom\u2019s recent acquisition of VMWare could provide many opportunities for smaller hosts and more data-sensitive enterprise customers, such as those in Europe. As Majrekar said: \u201c<\/span>Our ability to have a managed enterprise-ready version of a public cloud deployed locally in your own data centre using your own hardware and giving these customers the ability to use VMs in a VMware way will be really interesting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, Broadcom announced a significant change in pricing<\/span><\/a> that caused concern for many of its existing customers. However, after many complaints and an investigation from the EU, <\/span>Broadcom rolled back some of these changes<\/span><\/a>. So how much business it brings to these smaller hosts now remains to be seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Write once, run once becoming a reality<\/b><\/h2>\n

Programmers have long dreamed of writing code once and having that code run equally on all operating systems and platforms. From <\/span>Java<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>Electron<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Flutter<\/span><\/a>, and beyond, developers have strived to create technologies to accomplish this ideal for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

Originally created by Mozilla in 2017, <\/span>WebAssembly<\/span><\/a>, also known as WASM, has quickly become a web standard and is supported by all major web browsers. It allows compiled languages such as C++ and Rust to run applications in browsers. It\u2019s <\/span>Java web applets<\/span><\/a> all over again!<\/span><\/p>\n

The ability to run compiled code in browsers (client-side) is interesting enough, but recent developments are what makes WASM more interesting in relation to cloud native. A handful of open source projects and companies are using WASM to run server-side, such as <\/span>WasmEdge<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>SpinKube<\/span><\/a>, which is creating interesting competition for containers, the isolated application and dependency units that run on Kubernetes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of worrying about creating and maintaining secure and optimised containers to run application services \u2014 with the myriad complications they present \u2014 WASM presents an alternative. The service runs as a compiled binary, including all dependencies. Thanks to WASM\u2019s secure-by-default approach, it\u2019s more efficient and less vulnerable than containers that can potentially have dozens, if not hundreds, of exploits via dependencies and misconfiguration. This doesn\u2019t mean that WASM will replace Kubernetes. Rather, it might replace the containers that Kubernetes typically orchestrates. Kubernetes would still manage scaling, rollout, etcetera.<\/span><\/p>\n

Civo now offers two options for hosting WASM payloads on their Kubernetes service:, <\/span>Fermyon Spin<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>WASMedge<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Civo\u2019s CTO, Dinesh Majrekar told me: <\/span>\u201cWe want to be there to support new technologies that others don\u2019t, staying up to speed with them and allowing customers to deploy them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

S\u00e9bastien Blanc, Staff Developer Advocate at Finland\u2019s <\/span>Aiven<\/span><\/a>, echoed the sentiment that WASM is \u201cthe next big thing,\u201d adding that he is \u201cbetting on WebAssembly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thierry Carrez, the general manager of the <\/span>Open Infrastructure Foundation<\/span><\/a>, which oversees projects further down the stack and creates and manages data centre infrastructure, shared that view.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the container as the computing unit will change,\u201d Carrez said. \u201cThere will be at least a variety of options. People realise that VMs are still better at a number of things. WebAssembly is better at some other things, so it\u2019s going to eat a bit at containers. I\u2019m not sure that we\u2019ll end the cloud native trend, though.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Civo\u2019s Dinesh also mentioned that WASM\u2019s ability to run the same code remotely, locally, or on-device gives developers<\/a> interesting possibilities for spreading application workloads across devices to where they\u2019re needed most and away from centralised servers. This is exactly the promise of edge computing for cars, smart devices, and small compute devices that are slowly spreading around the world. These devices process their own small payloads but still need to check in with services hosted elsewhere for updates occasionally and to send and receive data.<\/span><\/p>\n

WASM isn\u2019t suited to all tasks, and methods to allow payloads to communicate with external services like databases are still in progress. As a technology on the verge of wider adoption, it\u2019s definitely worth investigating and keeping an eye on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Platforms take centre stage<\/b><\/h2>\n

In its 10-year history, Kubernetes and cloud-native has become incredibly complex. Developers and implementers layer abstraction upon abstraction in an attempt to make creating and maintaining infrastructure and services more manageable and flexible.<\/span><\/p>\n

This has led to an entire trend of \u201cplatform teams,\u201d which help build internal self-serve tools that other teams use to create and deploy short and long-term infrastructure and services in a controlled way. Whilst this idea, sometimes called an \u201cinternal developer platform,\u201d has gained traction, especially within large companies, not everyone has the resources to bolt together all the pieces needed to create a functioning platform team, so naturally, SaaS companies have emerged to fill that gap.<\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u201cinternal developer platform\u201d is a European invention, coined by Germany\u2019s <\/span>Humanitec<\/span><\/a>, as is its close relation and precursor, \u201cservice catalogue,\u201d coined by Sweden\u2019s <\/span>Spotify<\/span><\/a> Backstage team. Humanitec\u2019s CTO, Chris Stephenson, was part of the Google team that built the precursor to Kubernetes, \u201cBorg.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As the platform concept grows, some companies have pivoted to providing tools for internal teams. One such company is Germany\u2019s <\/span>Giant Swarm<\/span><\/a>. They are relative veterans of Cloud Native, and I have known them for nearly ten years. The company is currently on what they call \u201c3.0\u201d of their product, which aims to provide development teams with what they need to function and create their work.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Joe Salisbury, Giant Swarm\u2019s VP of Engineering, told me:<\/span> \u201cWe want to help a platform team focus on capabilities and focus on the application team, and we fully take care of the infrastructure. They don\u2019t need to be thinking too much about Kubernetes upgrades or the major infrastructure around monitoring or observability. The idea is that Giant Swarm can holistically manage your platform for you, and you can focus on actual differentiating work for your platform team.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Often, behind the scenes of a platform as a service provider are infrastructure as code<\/a> tools such as Terraform. Created and stewarded by HashiCorp and open source since its inception, Terraform caused waves of controversy last year when it ceased open-source development and changed its licence to stop any commercialisation. This led to a rapid effort by the contributor community to create \u201c<\/span>OpenTofu<\/span><\/a>,\u201d and several companies have already created products on top of that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sebastian Stadil, Core contributor to OpenTofu and CEO at <\/span>Scalr<\/span><\/a>, which offers a scalable SaaS version of OpenTofu, explained how successful the project had been so far:<\/span><\/p>\n

The 10 months since the creation of the OpenTofu fork have already led to an ecosystem of Terraform-compatible tools and projects, including Scalr, <\/span>Terragrunt<\/span><\/a>, and <\/span>Infracost<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

With so many more companies joining the space as interest grows, I asked Humanitec\u2019s VP of Product and Growth, Luca Galante, how they see the current state of platform engineering. A term that Humanitec, in some ways, helped create:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t invent platform engineering, but we did put a name on it. We\u2019re going to continue to shape that narrative. We\u2019re doing that with thought leadership pieces, regular webinars with practitioners, and our online conference, PlatformCon, had 22,000 attendees last year, and we expect 35,000 attendees this year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding a potential distant future for cloud-native, Luca proposed the idea of continued abstraction for infrastructure combined with AI. A model could learn from your specific needs for developer platforms and create them smartly based on simple prompts or requirements. Many years ago, GitHub proposed the idea of \u201c<\/span>ChatOps<\/span><\/a>,\u201d but the practice lost favour as the chatbots of the time weren\u2019t capable enough. But now, we are fast approaching a new era of Generative AI for infrastructure as code, with companies such as <\/span>AppCD<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Cloud-native 10 years from now<\/b><\/h2>\n

Kubernetes and cloud-native, from AI to smart cities, from e-commerce to essential infrastructure, power the innovations of others. Does it also need to innovate when its users already do? Or is it (mostly) silently working in the background enough? I went into KubeCon looking for drastic and dramatic future changes, but in reality, that was never going to be the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

The work and payloads it supports will change, as will how and where developers and engineers want to use it. But with Kubernetes and its related technologies now so entrenched in our workflows, I think it will take at least another 10 years before even half of its current user base has moved on to the latest hot new trend.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy birthday, Kubernetes, and here\u2019s to many more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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