Source: containerjournal.com. The original report was commissioned by VMware and conducted by Dimensional Research.
Overview
VMware published its State of Kubernetes 2020 Report in May 2020, based on a survey of 247 individuals actively using Kubernetes inside organizations with 1,000 or more employees. The research was conducted by Dimensional Research and commissioned by VMware. Because the study targeted large organizations—24% of respondents came from companies with more than 2,500 developers—the findings skew toward enterprise-scale deployments rather than small-team or startup usage.
The report covers adoption rates, deployment patterns, perceived benefits, decision-making structures, and the practical challenges teams face when rolling out Kubernetes at scale.
Kubernetes Adoption Is Growing Rapidly
The headline number from the report is a jump in Kubernetes usage from 27% in 2018 to 48% in 2020—nearly doubling in two years. Despite this growth, adoption is still far from uniform across workloads and infrastructure:
- 57% of adopters run fewer than 10 Kubernetes clusters.
- 60% run less than half of their containerized workloads on Kubernetes.
- 59% of respondents are running Kubernetes in production environments.
- Of those in production, only 20% operate more than 50 clusters.
These figures paint a picture of strong but still maturing adoption: many organizations have committed to Kubernetes in production, yet most have not yet migrated the majority of their workloads onto it.
On-Premises Deployments Still Dominate
Despite the widespread narrative around cloud-native infrastructure, the report found that 60% of Kubernetes deployments are on-premises, with vendor-managed cloud deployments accounting for 42%. The report’s authors suggest this reflects enterprise environments that prefer to pilot new technologies within existing, familiar virtual infrastructure before committing to public cloud environments.
This finding is particularly relevant for platform and infrastructure engineers who may be under pressure to move workloads to the cloud. On-premises Kubernetes—using distributions such as VMware Tanzu, Red Hat OpenShift, or upstream Kubernetes on bare metal—remains a primary deployment model in large organizations.
Enterprise Adoption Is Still in Early Stages
The report frames the current moment as early-stage enterprise adoption. At the time of publication, Kubernetes was approximately five years old. The authors note that Kubernetes is expected to displace older container orchestration tools in the coming years, which should drive broader organizational adoption beyond the siloed or experimental use seen today.
For DevOps practitioners, this is a useful reminder: the majority of enterprises are still building the internal expertise, tooling, and processes needed to use Kubernetes effectively at scale. If your organization feels behind, the data suggests you are not alone.
Reported Benefits of Kubernetes Adoption
The report asked respondents what concrete benefits they had seen from adopting Kubernetes. The results were overwhelmingly positive:
- 95% of respondents reported clear benefits from Kubernetes adoption.
- 56% cited improved resource utilization as a top benefit.
- 53% cited shortened software development cycles.
- Additional benefits included containerizing monolithic applications, enabling cloud migration, and reducing public cloud costs.
The breadth of perceived benefits—spanning both developer productivity and infrastructure efficiency—suggests that Kubernetes is delivering value across organizational boundaries, not just within platform teams.
Who Is Making Kubernetes Decisions?
The report provides insight into the organizational dynamics driving Kubernetes adoption:
- Development teams are the primary decision-makers in 38% of cases.
- 83% of respondents said more than one team is involved in selecting a Kubernetes distribution.
- 18% of the time, C-level executives are involved in the decision—a signal that Kubernetes has moved beyond a purely technical conversation into business strategy discussions.
The multi-team nature of these decisions has practical implications. When multiple stakeholders—development, operations, security, and leadership—must align on a Kubernetes distribution, the selection process becomes more complex and politically charged than a straightforward technical evaluation.
Key Challenges and Pain Points
Despite the optimism around Kubernetes, the report is candid about the difficulties organizations face:
- 40% cite lack of internal alignment as a challenge when selecting a Kubernetes distribution.
- 70% identify a knowledge gap in Kubernetes management as a significant challenge.
- 67% cite insufficient knowledge of Kubernetes deployment techniques.
- Other common hurdles include integrating Kubernetes with existing infrastructure and meeting security compliance requirements.
The knowledge gap finding is particularly striking. Even in large enterprises that are actively running Kubernetes in production, the majority of respondents reported that their teams lack sufficient expertise in core operational areas. This points to a persistent skills shortage that training programs, internal documentation, and platform engineering teams need to address.
The Executive–Developer Disconnect
One of the more nuanced findings concerns how executives and developers perceive barriers to productivity:
- 49% of executives identify integration of new and existing technologies as the biggest impediment to developer productivity.
- Only 29% of developers agree—instead, 29% of developers point to access to infrastructure as their top hurdle.
This disconnect matters for anyone trying to make the case for platform investment. When executives and developers diagnose different root causes, it can lead to misaligned tooling investments and organizational friction. Notably, 55% of developers report having self-service access to Kubernetes resources—suggesting that where self-service models are implemented, they are helping to reduce that infrastructure access bottleneck.
Report Scope and Limitations
The sample size of 247 respondents is relatively small for a report making broad claims about industry trends. The report is also acknowledged to skew toward technology and financial services companies, though other sectors including education, manufacturing, and healthcare were represented.
Readers should also bear in mind that the report was commissioned by VMware, a vendor with commercial interests in the Kubernetes ecosystem. The findings are useful directional indicators, but should be considered alongside other independent surveys and research when informing strategic decisions.
Summary: Key Takeaways
- Kubernetes enterprise adoption nearly doubled between 2018 and 2020, from 27% to 48%.
- Most enterprise deployments are still on-premises, not in the public cloud.
- Adoption is real but partial: most organizations run fewer than 10 clusters and have not yet migrated the majority of their workloads.
- 95% of adopters report measurable benefits, with resource utilization and faster development cycles cited most often.
- Knowledge gaps in management and deployment remain the dominant operational challenge.
- Decision-making is a multi-team exercise in most organizations, with developers leading but executives increasingly involved.
- Self-service infrastructure access is correlated with developer productivity gains.