Kubernetes adoption hasn’t exploded yet, new study shows

One cannot deny that containers and microservices are powerful tools for solving many of the problems we face with modern tech. More and more organizations are turning to microservices but there are a still few unknowns and misconceptions when it comes to this architectural style. How far along are companies in the microservices game? Has it finally earned its ‘trend’ badge? Are containers the perfect solution for running microservices? Is Kubernetes adoption booming?

Earlier this years, leaders of the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference conducted a survey on microservices maturity, which can be downloaded here.

Microservices maturity survey findings: Highlights

Containers are on the rise. Almost 70 percent of respondents use containers for microservices
Kubernetes has emerged as the defacto standard in enabling IT to build out digital architectures to deliver on their business goals, and it is now a “must have” for whatever your organization’s level of digital maturity is. However, less than 40 percent of survey respondents have adopted Kubernetes.
Over 50 percent of respondents use continuous deployment.
Almost 90 percent (86%, to be exact) of respondents claim that their microservices efforts have been at least partially successful.

I would argue that the most interesting finding is the one concerning Kubernetes, which seems to be developers’ darling at the moment. Kubernetes was on the “adopt” list in the latest edition of ThoughtWorks’ Technology Radar, and even though people’s love affair with Kubernetes started quite a while ago, it only intensified in the last couple of years. A lot of people we got in contact with this year have said that Kubernetes is their No.1 choice, and then there’s last year’s GitHub Octoverse which showed that three Kubernetes-based projects appear at the top of the charts for the most-discussed repositories and projects with most reviews.

Here are some statements that add fuel to Kubernetes’ fire:

I think we will learn to think of Kubernetes as an infrastructure. Kubernetes will be the Lingua Franca in and into which everything moves.

Erkan Yanar, freelance consultant

Kubernetes has won the orchestration war; the Kubernetes platform provides a consistent, open, vendor-neutral way to manage and run your workloads.

Nicki Watt, CTO at OpenCredo

Experts predicted an even further dominance of Kubernetes in 2018.

We’ll see an increased dominance of Kubernetes.

Mark Pundsack, Head of Product at GitLab

All this makes O’Reilly’s survey findings even more interesting because even though Kubernetes is on everyone’s lips these days, not many people walk the talk.