While many of us have already heard of Kubernetes, or may even be leveraging it within our technology stacks, it’s still important to remember that the platform is undergoing massive adoption and evolvement. Due to its relative infancy, Kubernetes is ripe to allow for integrating new technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). As an open-source platform, Kubernetes orchestrates containerized applications, ensuring they run efficiently and resiliently.

Ensuring efficient deployment and management of containerized applications is critical to development teams across all possible industries in today’s cloud-native world. A standout service for many has been AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS), which has proven to be scalable and easy to use while integrated into one of the largest cloud ecosystems out there. However, one size does not fit all.

If there's one thing almost every developer has done in their life, it's deploy an application to Heroku. From their launch in 2007, Heroku dominated PaaS and caught the attention of Salesforce who acquired them in 2010. They had the first managed Postgres service in 2011, an easy to use CLI, and, last but not least, it was free to get started which led to a big uptick in initial popularity. Every side project from here to the moon went to Heroku.

StackState had a blast at this year's KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gathering in Paris! The discussions were in-depth, covering a wide array of topics and lasting much longer than in the past. This year, attendees seemed to have a considerably deeper understanding of the cloud-native ecosystem, probably attributed to its rapid growth. We also noticed a pretty dramatic evolutionary shift in the vendors at the expo hall, who were showcasing some truly progressive specialized solutions.

Kubernetes has changed the way many organizations approach the deployment of their applications. But despite its benefits, the additional layers of abstraction and reams of data can cause complexity around Kubernetes monitoring. We’ve seen so much of these challenges borne out in the results of the 2024 Observability Pulse survey. In the survey report, 36% of respondents say Kubernetes poses a challenge, and just 10% of organizations say they have full observability into their environments.

Another KubeCon has passed! Now that we have all (hopefully) recovered from the week in Paris with good food, wine, and catching up with colleagues, let’s talk about the important topics that took center stage at KubeCon EU 2024 this year. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the initial Kubernetes release, it’s evident that the growth and positive impact of containerized computing have revolutionized the industry.

Ciara Carey reflects on her experience at the KubeCon event in Paris including her top 10 talks and current industry trends.

In November 2023, the technology landscape witnessed a monumental shift with Broadcom's acquisition of VMware for $69 billion. This strategic move not only redefines the contours of IT and cloud computing but also signifies a new era for the new giant. Broadcom's leap towards subscription-based services and hybrid cloud environments echoes a broader industry evolution towards more flexible, service-oriented architectures.

Backstage is gaining wide adoption for platform engineering teams looking to build internal development platforms. After implementing Backstage, data has shown an improvement in 2X of code changes, and a decrease of 17% in cycle time making a huge impact on the business delivery pipeline for organizations. Backstage with its rich plugin ecosystem, makes it possible to get full troubleshooting and security coverage you need across your entire pipeline in a single dashboard and interface.

The collaboration between development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams is crucial for delivering high-quality software products and services efficiently. DevOps has emerged as a transformative approach that bridges the gap between these two traditionally siloed functions, fostering a culture of collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement.