We usually visit a lot of conferences and do a lot of press reporting about those events. One of the highlights this year is certainly the Kubecon in Paris – one of the most important and vibrant events of the cloud community.
This year, Jens Soeldner and Cornelius May joined the conference.
Jens and Cornelius wrote an in-depth article for Computerweekly. Nevertheless, we have a short summary here on the blog.
Emerging Trends and Educational Programs
At KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2024 in Paris, hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), over 12,500 attendees marked it as the world’s leading open-source conference, rivaling major manufacturer events. Kicking off with the pre-event „Cloud_Native Rejekts,“ sponsored by Cisco, Microsoft Azure, and Rancher by SUSE, it set the stage for a community-driven experience, offering a platform for presentations not included in the main conference schedule.
Priyanka Sharma, CNCF’s General Manager, highlighted AI’s prominence in current IT trends during her keynote, noting Kubernetes and its distributions as crucial environments for AI workloads. Yet, challenges in GPU scalability and availability need addressing. The CNCF has formed the Cloud Native AI Working Group to tackle these issues, already producing a whitepaper outlining the state of technology and future steps.
The conference also shone a light on CNCF’s comprehensive training and certification program, including Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD, CKS) recognized as industry standards. Clyde Seepersad of the Linux Foundation emphasized the importance of vendor-neutral training for career advancement. New advanced courses were introduced, covering DevOps, security, and AI/ML toolkits with Kubeflow, demonstrating Linux Foundation’s commitment to keeping pace with technological advancements.
Notably, the „Kubestronaut“ program was launched to honor experts who maintain all five Kubernetes certifications, underscoring the CNCF’s expanding training and certification offerings in areas beyond Kubernetes, such as Linux administration and programming.
Innovations and Solutions from the Exhibition Floor
Over 200 companies showcased their solutions in the extensive exhibition area, with notable announcements including Red Hat’s OpenShift 4.15, which now supports AWS Outposts and Wavelength Zones for edge computing applications. Cloud Foundry remains a significant player post-VMware acquisition by Broadcom, promising continued investment.
Kubermatic introduced KubeLB for automated load balancer deployment in Kubernetes, and Dynatrace showcased AI-driven solutions for observability and security. The observability space saw further innovation from Logz.io with its LLM-based AI solution and JFrog’s FrogML to support the developer community.
Sysdig’s evolution into a leader in cloud-native security was highlighted, with its Falco project reaching CNCF’s graduated status. Venafi introduced solutions for workload communication security, and Edgeless Systems presented encryption-based security for cloud and AI applications, emphasizing German IT security expertise.
Storage solutions were also in the spotlight, with NetApp and Portworx by PureStorage discussing their contributions to Kubernetes storage and data management, showcasing the industry’s embrace of Kubernetes as the standard for modern application development.
The presence of German company Hetzner highlighted local innovation, demonstrating the capabilities of its public cloud environment, including Kubernetes cluster management.
For those who missed the event, presentations are available on the CNCF’s YouTube channel, and the next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe is set for April 2025 in London, promising another gathering of cloud-native technology and community collaboration.
