Ambassador post originally published on Medium by Dotan Horovits
“Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a new open standardization initiative recently formed under the Linux Foundation with the mission of providing standard reference architecture for cloud native applications and services, based on open-source software (OSS).”
That’s how I started my blog post 10 years ago, in August 2015 (back then I blogged on WordPress).
And the momentum carried on. Eight months later I was excited to share that Prometheus joined The CNCF. Prometheus has since become a de-facto standard for cloud-native monitoring, and recently reached an important milestone with the long-awaited 3.0 major release.
More projects have followed suit and joined the CNCF to augment Kubernetes with needed capabilities for running critical production workloads and managing them at scale, addressing aspects such as observability, security and networking. This ecosystem has fortified Kubernetes as the de-facto standard for container orchestration (remember that 10 years ago we had also Docker swarm, Mesos, Nomad?). In fact, just last year we celebrated 10 years to Kubernetes (or as we called it in the CNCF: kuberTENes).
Since then the CNCF has grown to over 200 projects in various maturity stages, including over 30 graduated project. The domains have also expanded from Kubernetes and its immediate circle in the DevOps domain, into far wider topics, ranging from FinOps to Platform Engineering and chaos engineering. In fact, looking at the CNCF landscape these days could be somewhat overwhelming.
I got to escort OpenTelemetry, second most active project in the CNCF, since its foundation. My first time on the KubeCon stage was in fact an OpenTelemetry talk. I even got to start a new SIG (special interest group) under OpenTelemetry, to focus on CI/CD observability.
After years of advocating for the CNCF since its foundation, speaking, running a local CNCF chapter, organizing Kubernetes Community Days and more, I was honored to become a formal CNCF Ambassador, as part of the CNCF’s revamped Cloud Native Ambassadors program in 2023. I’ve since got re-elected for additional terms through 2026. It’s been an honor and a pleasure serving alongside cloud-native experts and afficionados from around the world. I’ve since changed jobs, but my Ambassador role and my connections with the cloud-native community are something I carry with me and cherish.
As I look back on this decade-long journey, what strikes me most is not only the sheer growth of projects and technologies under the CNCF umbrella, but also the strength of the community that powers it. To me, the CNCF has always been more than a collection of tools — it’s a movement shaped by collaboration, openness, and shared passion for building the future of software. I feel privileged to have played a part in this story, and I’m excited to see how the next decade of cloud native innovation unfolds. Cheers to the CNCF’s 10th anniversary (or as we called it in the CNCF: cTENcf).🥂