Kubernetes & Co. Cambrian Explosion





As Kubernetes continues to consolidate its market dominance, the inevitable supporting ecosystem thrives. We discussed a number of blips surrounding Kubernetes in the tools, platforms and techniques quadrants, showing just how pervasive this subject has become. For example, Lens and k9s simplify cluster management, kind helps with local testing and Gloo offers an alternative API Gateway. Hydra is an OAuth server optimized to run on Kubernetes, and Argo CD uses Kubernetes’ native desired-state management to implement a CD server. These developments indicate Kubernetes is perfectly poised to create a supporting ecosystem; it offers critical capabilities but with abstractions that are often too low level or advanced for most users. Thus, the complexity void fills with tooling to either ease the configuration and the use of Kubernetes or supply something missing from the core functionality. As Kubernetes continues to dominate, we see a rich ecosystem growing and expanding to take advantage of its strengths and address its weaknesses. As this ecosystem matures, we expect it to evolve toward a new set of higher-level abstractions offering the benefits of Kubernetes without the bewildering range of options.