LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF CLOUD
Three Predictions for Cloud Native Platforms
Adopting GitOps, edge stacks, multi-cloud
Adopting GitOps, Kubernetes edge stack, and multi-cloud
It is the time of the year when everyone starts to make predictions. At Ambassador we have recently been very focused on the early access launch of the Ambassador Edge Stack, and also presenting several sessions at KubeCon in San Diego, but we were keen to take some time out to reflect on the key trends we see emerging within the cloud native space over the next twelve months.
Broadly speaking, our top three predictions for the cloud native space in 2020 are:
- GitOps gains mainstream adoption
- The Kubernetes edge(s) will see rapid innovation
- More tools and practices will be focus on “multi-cloud”
GitOps gains mainstream adoption
The emerging next generation of application deployment platforms and DevOps tooling have been built on a new foundation that is cloud-agnostic: the Kubernetes framework. “GitOps” is a way to manage Kubernetes clusters and the associated delivery of software applications; although it is already popular, we predict that 2020 will be the year GitOps goes mainstream.
GitOps works by using the Git version control system as a single source of truth for declaratively configured infrastructure and applications. As Git is now at the center of the delivery process, engineers use a self-service process for modifying infrastructure, deploying applications, and releasing new features, simply by issuing pull requests.
On a related topic, there does appear to be a bit of a CLI vs UI workflow schism emerging within the cloud native ecosystem. At KubeCon NA, held in San Diego, many organizations were extolling the virtues of GitOps and declarative configuration, with the usual suspects from Weaveworks, and also user stories from Fidelity and CERN. However, there were many folks wandering around the expo hall asking how UI can be used to drive configuration, and there were vendors keen to meet this need.
One way this divergence could be addressed is by using UIs as an alternative way to generate declarative config that can be fed into a GitOps pipeline, while still supporting the creation of config manually or via other automated processes.
The Kubernetes edge(s) will see rapid innovation
Broadly speaking, there are three definitions of the edge associated with cloud native technologies:
- Device edge e.g. IoT, tablet, phone etc
- Point of Presence (PoP) edge e.g. distributed remote Kubernetes clusters
- Data center edge e.g. Ingress, API gateway, WAF etc
All three categories have seen increasing adoption in 2019, and as the definitions and requirements of these edges become clearer, this will open up potential for rapid innovation.
At Ambassador we have recognized there are two primary challenges with datacenter edge technologies and API gateways when adopting Kubernetes, and we’ve presented several strategies for managing APIs and the Kubernetes network edge. Our conclusion is that everyone building a Kubernetes platform needs an effective edge stack that provides L4 load balancing, an API gateway, security, cross-cutting functional requirement management (rate limiting, QoS etc) and more.
The second half of our 2019 was spent working with and listening to customers, and in December we launched the early access version of the Ambassador Edge Stack. In 2020 we will continue to work on several innovations within managing and scaling edge technologies, and we expect the underlying proxy powering the Ambassador API gateway — Envoy Proxy — to also continue leading the field with innovations in this space.
More tools and practices will be focus on “multi-cloud”
The large public cloud vendors are focusing on extending the private data center into the cloud (and vice versa) via two main approaches: first, the compute abstraction, which consists of managing VMs, containers, and k8s via a common cloud control plane, such as GCP Anthos and Azure Arc; and second, via the use of a networking abstraction with common communication control planes, such as seen in AWS Outposts and AWS App Mesh. We believe this push towards hybrid clouds and supporting the integration of multiple clouds will only continue to get stronger in 2020, and accordingly more and more tools will focus on multi-cloud.
At Ambassador e we’ve shared our thoughts about migrating from VMs to Kubernetes, and also presented on hybrid cloud migration strategies using an API gateway, such as Ambassador, and a service mesh, such as HashiCorp’s Consul. We’ll be continuing this work in 2020, and talking more about how to build a cloud agnostic Kubernetes platform.
Please join us on our 2020 journey
You can learn more about the Ambassador Edge Stack at www.getambassador.io, and if you have any questions, please join the team in the Ambassador Slack Community.
