The Cloud Native Tipping Point: What 689 Companies Just Revealed

Image source: https://www.cncf.io/reports/t…

TL;DR

The CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey reveals 98% of organizations now use cloud native technologies, with Kubernetes playing a crucial role in AI infrastructure. Multi-cloud and hybrid strategies are prevalent, and the main challenge has shifted to cultural changes within development teams.

Key Points

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98% of organizations have adopted cloud native technologies, confirming its mainstream status.

47% of organizations cite 'cultural change within development teams' as the top challenge to cloud native adoption, ahead of technical issues.

59% of organizations run workloads in on-premises datacenters, and 59% also use public clouds; hybrid and multi-cloud strategies are widely adopted, especially by large enterprises.

Only 7% of organizations deploy AI/ML models daily, while 44% are not running any AI/ML workloads on Kubernetes.

60% of organizations have implemented CI/CD platforms and 77% have adopted GitOps practices. The report highlights strong momentum in automation and observability.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation's latest annual survey reports near-universal adoption of cloud native technologies, with 98% of organizations leveraging them in some form. Kubernetes sits at the center of this ecosystem. Once limited to container orchestration, it now serves as a foundational infrastructure layer for production workloads, including AI deployment. Despite this readiness, many organizations remain hesitant to push AI models into production due to limited expertise and the operational complexity of managing these systems at scale.

Multi-cloud and hybrid strategies have become standard across enterprises. Large organizations favor hybrid approaches to balance flexibility with compliance and internal controls, while smaller companies gravitate toward single-cloud setups that simplify infrastructure and reduce overhead. The operational challenges of cloud native adoption have shifted from tooling and complexity to internal dynamics. Nearly half of respondents cite cultural resistance, misaligned teams, or leadership gaps as the primary blockers to success.

The report shows broad cross-industry adoption. While software and tech companies continue to lead in usage, financial services, telecom, and healthcare are accelerating their adoption curves. Standard practices now include continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), GitOps, and declarative infrastructure management. Automation has become an operational baseline. Security and observability are also firmly embedded in daily workflows. Over half of organizations report using automated security tools to detect vulnerabilities and nearly one in five now incorporate continuous profiling into their monitoring stacks.

Regional differences persist. North America and Europe maintain leadership in Kubernetes maturity and GitOps practices. Asia-Pacific, while behind on some fronts, is catching up with aggressive growth. Across all regions, survey respondents emphasize the need for better internal alignment, developer enablement, and hands-on training to scale cloud native efforts sustainably.

The CNCF survey captures a maturing landscape. Cloud native has moved from fringe innovation to operational default. As AI becomes a production concern, organizations are increasingly relying on Kubernetes-based platforms to deliver the performance and flexibility these new workloads demand.

Key Numbers

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98 %

The percentage of organizations that have adopted cloud native technologies.

10 %

The percentage of organizations in very early or no-adoption stages of cloud native technologies.

66 %

The percentage of organizations hosting generative AI models using Kubernetes for AI inference workloads.

7 %

The percentage of organizations that deploy AI/ML models daily.

47 %

The percentage of organizations that deploy AI/ML models occasionally.

44 %

The percentage of organizations not running any AI/ML on Kubernetes.

59 %

The percentage of organizations running workloads in on-premises datacenters.

59 %

The percentage of organizations running workloads in public clouds.

37 %

The percentage of companies using two cloud providers.

26 %

The percentage of companies using three or more cloud providers.

56 %

The percentage of large organizations using hybrid setups.

27 %

The percentage of small organizations using hybrid setups.

1,200

The average number of servers managed by an organization.

47 %

The percentage of organizations citing "cultural change with the development team" as the #1 challenge.

91 %

The percentage of organizations using containers in their application delivery.

82 %

The percentage of container users running Kubernetes in production.

1,140

The average number of containers run by organizations in 2023.

2,341

The average number of containers run by organizations currently.

11 %

The percentage of organizations using serverless computing frameworks.

8 %

The percentage of organizations using service mesh by late 2025.

74 %

The percentage of organizations using containers to manage stateful applications.

77 %

The percentage of organizations that have adopted GitOps practices.

60 %

The percentage of organizations that have implemented a CI/CD platform.

29 %

The percentage of respondents deploying code to production multiple times per day.

38 %

The percentage of organizations reporting that at least 80% of their application releases are fully automated.

57 %

The percentage of companies using automated tools to detect vulnerabilities in their cloud native platforms.

42 %

The percentage of survey respondents from North America.

30 %

The percentage of survey respondents from Europe.

7 %

The percentage of survey respondents from Asia-Pacific.

24 %

The percentage of respondents from small firms.

30 %

The percentage of respondents from medium-sized firms.

46 %

The percentage of respondents from large enterprises.

Stakeholder Relationships

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People

Key entities and stakeholders, categorized for clarity: people, organizations, tools, events, regulatory bodies, and industries.

IT professionals Practitioners

IT professionals are the primary respondents in the CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey, offering ground-level insights into adoption patterns, challenges, and tooling in cloud native environments.

Leadership and management Organizational Stakeholders

Leadership and management are instrumental in driving DevOps culture, aligning teams, and ensuring strategic adoption of cloud native technologies across the organization.

Organizations

Key entities and stakeholders, categorized for clarity: people, organizations, tools, events, regulatory bodies, and industries.

CNCF Foundation

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is the steward of the cloud native ecosystem and conducts the Annual Survey to track global adoption trends, tooling, and organizational maturity.

Various industry verticals Survey Participants

Organizations from a wide array of sectors—including technology, finance, telecom, government, academia, and non-profits—participate in the CNCF survey, demonstrating cloud native’s cross-industry reach.

Tools

Key entities and stakeholders, categorized for clarity: people, organizations, tools, events, regulatory bodies, and industries.

Kubernetes Container Orchestration Platform

Kubernetes is the dominant platform for orchestrating containers and running production-grade cloud native workloads, including AI/ML inference systems.

GitHub Actions CI/CD Tool

GitHub Actions is a widely adopted continuous integration and delivery platform, especially favored in cloud native development pipelines for its seamless GitHub integration.

Argo Workflow Automation Tool

Argo is a cloud native toolset used for automating Kubernetes workflows, including job execution, events, and CI/CD tasks.

Argo CD GitOps Tool

Argo CD is a declarative GitOps engine that automates application deployment and lifecycle management using Kubernetes manifests stored in Git repositories.

Flux GitOps Tool

Flux is a GitOps controller that synchronizes state between Git repositories and Kubernetes clusters, supporting continuous delivery and infrastructure as code practices.