CNCF Research Reveals How Cloud Native Technology is Reshaping Global Business and Innovation

New study identifies a shift from security concerns to collaboration and efficiency as the top priority in cloud native adoption, emphasizing the need for seamless teamwork and automation

LONDON, April 1, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe - The Cloud Native Computing Foundation^® (CNCF^®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today released its 2024 Cloud Native Survey, revealing cloud native adoption has reached an all-time high of 89% among surveyed organizations. Kubernetes remains the industry standard, with 93% of organizations using, piloting, or evaluating it, thus solidifying its role in modern infrastructure.

This widespread adoption signals a fundamental shift in how businesses develop and deploy software. Organizations are embracing cloud native technologies to accelerate innovation, reduce time to market, and improve resilience in an increasingly digital economy.

"The cloud native landscape is constantly evolving especially as we hit a decade of CNCF," said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. "Organizations are facing cultural and operational hurdles as they scale adoption. Security remains vital, but the focus has shifted to automation and best practices that enable faster, more reliable software delivery. Companies prioritizing both technical and cultural transformation will gain a competitive edge."

Technology Trends Shaping Cloud Native Growth

The survey, conducted with Linux Foundation Research, highlights a shift in challenges. While security was once the top hurdle, cultural and operational shifts now take precedence. Additionally, CI/CD adoption surged 31% year-over-year, accelerating software delivery and reinforcing GitOps as a best practice. These changes reflect a critical transition: businesses are moving beyond simply adopting cloud native tools and are now optimizing how teams collaborate, automate, and scale their operations.

• Kubernetes adoption continues to grow, with 80% of organizations running it in production, up from 66% in 2023.
• CI/CD adoption is fueling faster releases, with 60% of organizations leveraging CI/CD for most or all applications.
• Security measures are improving, with 60% of organizations vetting open source projects for active communities, and 57% using automated tools to detect vulnerabilities.
• GitOps is gaining traction, with 77% of organizations adopting its principles for deployment.
• Serverless adoption remains split, with some expanding use while others step back due to cost and complexity.
• Service mesh adoption is declining, dropping from 50% in 2023 to 42% in 2024 due to operational overhead concerns.

AI on Kubernetes: A Growing Opportunity

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) adoption on Kubernetes remains in its early stages, with 48% of organizations yet to deploy AI/ML workloads, according to the survey. However, early adopters are leveraging Kubernetes primarily for batch jobs (11%), model experimentation (10%), real-time model inference (10%), and data pre-processing (9%). These use cases suggest that while Kubernetes is beginning to play a role in AI/ML workloads, challenges remain in fully operationalizing AI in cloud native environments. As tooling and best practices evolve, Kubernetes is expected to become a key enabler of AI-driven innovation across industries.

The Future of Cloud Native

As cloud native technologies evolve, CNCF's findings indicate automation, cultural transformation, and security will be critical for organizations staying ahead in an increasingly digital landscape. The survey underscores that companies investing in these areas will be better positioned to navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing technology ecosystem and deliver more scalable, secure, and efficient applications.

For more details, visit www.cncf.io or access the full dataset at data.world/thelinuxfoundation.

Additional Resources

• CNCF Newsletter
  
  
• CNCF Twitter 
  
  
• CNCF Website 
  
  
• Learn About CNCF Membership 
  
  
• Learn About the CNCF End User Community

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 more than 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 the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are curtailed to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDK, Zephyr, and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org. The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Kaitlin Thornhill
The Linux Foundation
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SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation