It’s official – Kubernetes has never been more popular

The majority of cloud developers are now using Kubernetes and containers as part of their daily operations, according to new research from Civo which found 51% of those are doing so.

Of those deploying Kubernetes, 57% of the 1,000 cloud developers surveyed said they had seen an increase in the amount of Kubernetes clusters running within their organization over the last 12 months.

The overall level of adoption differed depending on which type of IT environment you look at: 35% of those surveyed are deploying Kubernetes via on-premises servers, while 27% are opting to deploy it within data centers, 39% are using it within public clouds, and 29% are using it within private clouds. 

So, why is Kubernetes usage growing?

The two most common benefits cited by Civo’s respondents were easy scaling of work, which 36% of respondents opted for, and easy management of containers, which 35% opted for.

The report also unearthed some issues that may be holding the adoption of the technology back, 54% of those surveyed said they viewed the complexity around Kubernetes as slowing down their use of containers, a distinct rise from 47% in 2021.

In addition, security may also be a factor holding adoption back, according to Civvo 66% of developers are worried about the security consequences created by Kubernetes vulnerabilities, and just over 50% of developers said misconfigurations or exposures were driving their concerns around Kubernetes security.

These fears likely are rooted in very real causes; in May 2022 nonprofit organization The Shadowserver Foundation found 84% of systems using container orchestration systems were accessible via the internet to some degree, for a whopping overall total of 381,654 systems. 

Container-based environments could be set for even more growth on the horizon.

Gartner expects this trend to continue and that by 2027 more than 90% of global organizations will be running workloads as containerized applications.