Pure Storage Survey Reveals Surge in Cloud-Native Adoption

Pure Storage, Inc., in partnership with Dimensional Research, released a new data report addressing the rapid adoption of cloud-native platforms to speed application delivery and fuel enterprise innovation.

For organizations who have already made the switch, their cloud native platforms are maturing quickly, giving 80% of respondents the confidence to build most of their new applications on these newer platforms within the next 5 years.

Organizations recognize supporting VMs and containers on multiple platforms is challenging and expensive, so 58% plan to migrate some of their applications from VM management to Kubernetes by using technologies like Kubevirt and Red Hat OpenShift.

The report, The Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024: The Data Trends Driving the Future of the Enterprise, explores the top priorities and trends in the cloud-native landscape, including modern virtualization, cloud-native database and AI/ML adoption using Kubernetes, and the rise of platform engineering. It surfaces best practices from advanced platform leaders, serving as a roadmap for enterprises seeking to scale Kubernetes initiatives.

Survey Highlights
The survey, representing mature and advanced platform leaders, was fielded among 527 IT professionals¹ with more than 4 years of experience directly managing data services in a Kubernetes environment.

Key findings:

• Majority of New Applications Will Be Built in Cloud-Native Platforms: Over the next 5 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 organizations plan to migrate some of their VM workloads to Kubernetes, with 65% planning to migrate VM workloads within the next 2 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: 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 conceptualize, develop, and deploy applications at scale. Recognizing the benefits, organizations 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 containerized environments.

“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. 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,” said Murli Thirumale, VP and GM, Portworx by Pure Storage.

“The latest Portworx by Pure Storage data findings confirm what we’ve seen across industries: cloud-native strategies are becoming more prominent with organizations now focusing on operationalizing cloud-native environments with data, security, sustainability and cost considerations. 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 optimized IT infrastructure,” said Archana Venkatraman, senior research director, cloud data management, IDC.

¹ Survey fielded among 527 qualified participants directly responsible (hands-on or management) for data services in a Kubernetes environment at companies of 500 employees or more.