Today we are very excited to release our Cloud Native Survey 2020. The report showcases the CNCF Cloud Native Survey results, which was conducted this year for the eighth time. 

The results show continued growth of cloud native tools and technologies, which has only accelerated due to increased demand for resources driven by the pandemic. We surveyed our extended community during May and June 2020, while most of us worked from home and spent hours on Zoom.

This years’ survey had a strong response from employees of large organizations, demonstrating that the use of cloud native in enterprises. Two-thirds of respondents were from organizations with more than 100 employees, and 30% were from organizations with more than 5,000 employees. This represents both software vendors and consumers, as 54% of respondents were part of an end user organization.

In terms of the results, we reached impressive milestones this year, particularly in the use of containers and container orchestration. Some 92% of respondents now say they use containers in production, an extraordinary 300% increase from just 23% in our first survey in March 2016. This is also a significant year-over-year jump from last year when it was 84% and 73% in 2018.

Additionally, 91% of respondents report using Kubernetes, 83% of them in production. This continues a steady increase in use in production from 78% last year and just 58% in 2018.

Other key takeaways from this year’s results include:

For a third year, we see release cycles continuing to speed up. The percentage of those who release software daily, or even multiple times a day, has increased to 29% from 27% last year. Weekly release cycles are still the most common (26%), but more than half of respondents (55%) release weekly or more frequently. 

Bar chart showing 26% repondents release cycles weekly, 19% monthly, 18% multiple times a day, 11% daily, 10% Ad Hoc, 10% N/A or don't know, and only 7% release it quarterly

CI/CD and storage tools are used broadly, while serverless tools, service meshes, and service proxies are growing.

Bar chart showing 82% respondents run continuous integration / continuous development (CI/CD) pipelines in production, 10% run and evaluating, 4% not yet, but planning to use in the next 12 months and 3% don't use it at all
Bar chart showing 60% organization using serverless technology as hosted platform, 22% using it as both hosted platform and installable software, 13% using it as installable software and 5% chose neither
Bar chart showing 32% are not using a service mesh, 27% use it in production, 23% using and evaulating, and 19% not yet use it, but planning tu use in the next 12 months
Bar chart showing 38% respondents don't use a service proxy, 37% use service proxy in production, 13% not yet using it, but planning to use it in the next 12 months, and 12% are using it and evaluating
Bar chart showing 55% respondents run stateful applications in containers in production, 22% chose no, stateless applications only, 12% use and evaluating, and 11% not yet using it, but planning to use in the next 12 months

For more insight into the results, including a look at the use of automation, containers, cloud, and more, please view the full report. The report data is available for download on GitHub.

We’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who took part in the survey! Keep your eyes peeled for a call to participate in the next survey early next year.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out.