Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024 Reveals Surge in Cloud-Native Adoption to Accelerate Business-Critical Application Delivery

More Than Half of IT Professionals Plan to Migrate or Modernise Some of Their VM Workloads to Kubernetes

DSA Editorial August 12, 2024

3 minutes read

Pure Storage^®, the IT pioneer that delivers the world’s most advanced data storage technology and services, in partnership with Dimensional Research, released “The Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024: The Data Trends Driving the Future of the Enterprise.” The new report addresses the rapid adoption of cloud-native platforms to speed application delivery and fuel enterprise innovation.

The new report explores the top priorities and trends in the cloud-native landscape, including modern virtualisation, cloud-native database and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) adoption using Kubernetes, and the rise of platform engineering. The report surfaces proven best practices from advanced platform leaders, serving as a roadmap for enterprises seeking to scale Kubernetes initiatives.

“Experienced platform leaders are running mission-critical applications like databases, analytics, and AI/ML on Kubernetes at massive scale in hybrid and multi-cloud environments,” said Murli Thirumale, VP & GM, Portworx by Pure Storage. “It’s no surprise that these platform leaders are also paving the way for VMs to be managed by Kubernetes without compromising enterprise requirements, supported by solutions like Red Hat OpenShift and Portworx. The latest findings underscore the urgency of elevating the platform engineering role to manage infrastructure alongside the application stack for seamless innovation.”

Survey Highlights of the Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024

The Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024, representing mature and advanced platform leaders, was fielded among 527 IT professionals with more than four years of experience directly managing data services in a Kubernetes environment. Its key findings include:

Majority of new applications will be built in cloud-native platforms. Over the next five years, 80% of respondents confirmed that all or most of their new applications will be built in cloud-native platforms. For their cloud-native technology, they prefer the flexibility of deploying in hybrid cloud environments, with 86% confirming they run their cloud-native technology across both public and private clouds.
Traditional VM infrastructure is at an inflection point. More than half (58%) of organisations plan to migrate some of their VM workloads to Kubernetes, with 65% planning to migrate VM workloads within the next two years.
Data on Kubernetes accelerates application delivery. Nearly all (98%) of respondents run data-intensive workloads on cloud-native platforms, with critical apps like databases (72%), analytics (67%), and AI/ML workloads (54%) being built on Kubernetes.
Platform engineering is vital for cloud-native success.Ninety-six percent (96%) of respondents state they already have platform engineering teams to increase the scalability and flexibility of their apps. Executives have shown willingness to invest in training (63%), consultants (60%), and hiring skilled engineers (52%) to support this function.

Industry Significance

The rise of cloud-native platforms marks a fundamental shift in how businesses conceptualise, develop, and deploy applications at scale. Recognising the benefits, organisations are migrating their VMs to cloud-native platforms to drive enhanced scalability, flexibility, and operational simplicity—all while reducing overall costs.

Amid this transformation, Kubernetes has matured from an emerging technology to a cornerstone for modern applications over the past decade, supporting the most data-intensive workloads that fuel enterprise innovation—from real-time analytics to AI and ML to databases, and more. This shift has elevated the role of platform engineering, responsible for managing the infrastructure that enables efficient application development, deployment, and management within containerised environments.

“The latest Portworx by Pure Storage data findings confirm what we’ve seen across industries: cloud-native strategies are becoming more prominent with organisations now focusing on operationalising cloud-native environments with data, security, sustainability, and cost considerations,” Archana Venkatraman, Senior Research Director, Cloud Data Management, at IDC. “The advancements in cloud-native stacks and platform engineering is facilitating faster development and a balanced co-existence of VMs and containers. While migrating VM-based applications to Kubernetes remains challenging, robust data services and container platforms are making it possible, enabling accelerated development, seamless management, automation, and optimised IT infrastructure.”