CNCF and SlashData Report Finds Platform Engineering Tools Maturing as Organizations Prepare for AI-Driven Infrastructure

New CNCF Technology Landscape Radar survey shows which cloud native tools developers view as mature and ready for broad adoption

Key Highlights:

• CNCF and SlashData release findings from the Q1 2026 CNCF Technology Landscape Radar survey based on responses from more than 400 professional developers.
• CNCF and SlashData's new report highlights which cloud native platform engineering tools developers who were surveyed view as mature, useful and ready for broad adoption.
• Helm, Backstage and kro are the three technologies placed in the 'Adopt' position of the application delivery technology radar, based on survey responses.
• Hybrid platform approaches are emerging as the dominant model for AI workflows, reflecting how organizations are adapting existing developer platforms to support AI workloads.

AMSTERDAM, March 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- KUBECON + CLOUDNATIVECON EUROPE -- The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, released new findings from the Q1 2026 CNCF Technology Landscape Radar report with SlashData, uncovering how developers are evaluating platform engineering technologies for workflow automation, application delivery, security and compliance management.

The survey findings provide an overview of how cloud native teams select internal platform tooling as organizations scale application delivery and prepare infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and increasingly automated development environments.

"Cloud native platforms have reached a point where developers are not just experimenting but standardizing on CNCF projects that make software delivery reliable at scale," said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. "What's especially notable about this research is how organizations are extending those same platforms to support AI workloads, showing how cloud native is the base layer of powering the next era of applications."

Platform Engineering Shapes AI Workflow Strategies

The report explores how organizations structure internal developer platforms (IDPs) and how these decisions influence their approach to AI workflows.

• 28% of organizations report having a dedicated platform engineering team responsible for internal platforms.
• The most common IDP model, reported by 41% of organizations, is multi-team collaboration for managing platform capabilities.
• 35% of organizations report using a hybrid platform to integrate AI workloads, combining existing developer platforms with specialized AI tooling.

These survey findings suggest that many organizations are integrating AI capabilities directly into their cloud native platforms, rather than creating entirely new infrastructure stacks.

Workflow Automation Tools Show Strong Developer Confidence

In the workflow automation category, developers identify several technologies as reliable options for production environments, placing ArgoCD, Armada, Buildpacks, GitHub Actions, Jenkins in the 'Adopt' category.

• GitHub Actions received high recommendations across maturity and usefulness metrics, with 91% of developers claiming that they would recommend it to peers.
• Jenkins demonstrated strong maturity scores, reflecting its long standing role in CI/CD
• Developers gave Karmada and other newer tools high maturity ratings. Karmada achieved the highest usefulness rating among workflow automation tools.

The report also highlights that emerging tools are attracting developer interest, even as they continue to mature, suggesting strong developer enthusiasm for multicluster management solutions despite the perception that the technology is still evolving.

Security and Compliance Tooling Becomes Core Platform Infrastructure

According to the survey findings, security and compliance technologies are emerging as core components of modern developer platforms. Developers placed cert-manager, Keycloak, Open Policy Agent (OPA) in the 'Adopt' category.

• cert-manager received the highest maturity ratings, with 87% of developers rating it four to five stars for stability and reliability.
• Tools addressing emerging areas such as software supply chain security are gaining attention but remain early in their maturity cycle. For example, in-toto and Sigstore showed lower maturity ratings with little negative sentiment.

These findings suggest that developers are still evaluating how these solutions fit into their development pipelines.

Application Delivery Platforms Continue to Standardize
In the application delivery category, Backstage, Helm, and kro were placed in the 'adopt' position, reflecting strong developer confidence in these projects.

• Helm received the highest maturity ratings among application delivery tools, with 94% of developers giving it the greatest number of four- and five-star ratings for reliability and stability.
• Helm's widespread usage across the ecosystem reinforces its role as a foundational component of Kubernetes application deployment.
• Backstage and kro performed strongly in usefulness ratings.

These findings indicate continued developer demand for tools that simplify Kubernetes complexity and improve developer experience across internal platforms.

"Developers are increasingly evaluating tools based on how well they fit into their internal platform architectures," said Liam Bollmann-Dodd, principal market research consultant at SlashData. "What we see in this data is those technologies gaining traction are the ones that are reducing operational friction while enabling teams to standardize application delivery and management."

Methodology

In Q4 2025, more than 400 professional developers using cloud native technologies were surveyed about their experiences with workflow automation, application delivery and security and compliance management tools. Respondents evaluated technologies they were familiar with based on their maturity, usefulness and the likelihood of recommending them.

Additional Resources:

• Download the full Technology Landscape Radar report
• Learn more about CNCF projects at https://www.cncf.io/projects/

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry's top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by nearly 800 members, including the world's largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

About SlashData
SlashData is an analyst firm with more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, working with the top Tech brands. SlashData helps platform and engineering leaders make better product, marketing and strategy decisions through best-in-class research, benchmarks, and foresight into how developers, tools, and software are changing.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Haley White
The Linux Foundation
[email protected]

SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation