Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
AI Redefines Development, Vendors (Try to) Redefine Open Source, and Kubernetes Calls for New Databases and Cost Controls
By Jesse Goodier is Manager, Quality and Integrations,
and Chip Zoller is a Principal Solutions Architect at Kubecost
Here are four developer and Kubernetes trends we expect to play out in
2024:
1) AI will (increasingly) transform the
developer landscape.
AI will grow into an
all-but-obligatory part of the developer experience, probably even faster than
most realize. AI developer tools, APIs, and integrations are advancing
incredibly quickly, and what we see in the generative AI space for graphic
arts-where a user can simply ask an AI tool for an image and receive quality
work without opening or necessarily even knowing Photoshop-is coming to
development. The result will lower barriers to entry and accelerate
development...with the caveat that developer skill sets might very well recede.
Great developer talent is already scarce, and a near future where developers
have the massive crutch of building and refining applications via AI tools
(without needing to actually learn languages) will only make finding talent
more of a challenge. This issue will only grow as new developers begin their
careers as AI natives.
That said,
organizations in more high-tech, tightly regulated, and risk-averse
industries-like healthcare, government, and finance-will be slower to adopt AI
development practices, and will require more robust security measures before
getting their feet wet. While AI-enhanced development will yield myriad
advantages, success here will hinge more on using AI as a tool within a
developer-driven process and not as the Oracle at Delphi where developers
simply submit whatever AI spits out.
The
intersection of generative AI development and app stacks built on Kubernetes
will also accelerate the phenomenon that Kubernetes is disappearing into a
transparent implementation detail. AI development will augment Kubernetes
abstraction layers, allowing organizations to build on Kubernetes far more
easily. As a result, organizations will readily create apps that offer
strategic new capabilities; for example, leveraging Kubernetes historical
trends and data to accurately project the long-term costs of upcoming
initiatives.
2) More vendors will spark pressing questions
on what open source really means.
Recent moves by the likes of IBM to change the availability of Red Hat
source code and HashiCorp to alter Terraform's licensing are splitting
communities, literally, as the Linux Foundation adopts a Terraform fork. These events are bellwethers of
struggles to come in 2024, as the industry debates the meaning of open source.
Shifting licensing decisions will repaint the open source landscape for quite
some time. The general notion of open source remains incredibly popular, with
no signs of letting up, but turmoil over open source will disincentivize
participation, as some ecosystems fracture and organizations fear that software
access may slam closed without much warning. 2024 should offer more clarity on
how open source foundations decide to adapt their selection processes and adopt
projects looking for a home.
3) Enterprises will adopt new database
strategies in pursuit of Kubernetes performance.
Kubernetes is clearly among the best tools for managing ephemeral
containers, and will continue to be in 2024. At the same time, database usage
on Kubernetes is growing. Look for organizations (Kubecost included) to shift
from traditional cloud object storage strategies to more performant options,
like open
source DuckDB.
For example, take a Kubernetes solution that collects analytics data on
every container running across every single cluster in an environment, every
hour of every day. Accessing that data in an object storage JSON format isn't
necessarily performant. In contrast, DuckDB is designed for data analytics and
processes data in memory without requiring a particular server or service,
allowing the database container to be more or less ephemeral. As a trend,
organizations that can benefit from better database performance will pursue
more appropriate options in the coming year.
4) Cloud and Kubernetes cost controls will
remain a priority.
More organizations are reaching the stage in their cloud transformations
where the goal is no longer to implement Kubernetes, but to operate it more
efficiently. Economic pressures incentivizing
streamlined budgets, expansions that necessitate operating Kubernetes at a
greater scale, and increasingly Kubernetes-centric development strategies will
all be essential concerns for enterprises in 2024. Cost visibility and controls
that keep
Kubernetes overprovisioning in check will
earn certain organizations extra slack in their budgets (and, for many, a leg
up on competitors) in the coming year.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jesse Goodier is Manager, Quality and Integrations, at Kubecost, which provides real-time cost
visibility and insight for teams using Kubernetes.
Chip Zoller is a Principal Solutions Architect at Kubecost.