Guest: Hilary Carter (LinkedIn)
Company: The Linux Foundation
Show Name: The Source
Topic: Cloud Native

When The Linux Foundation set out to capture the state of cloud native adoption in 2025, they needed more than just surface-level metrics. They needed to understand maturity, practices, challenges, and the human dynamics behind infrastructure decisions. The result is the 2025 CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey—a 65-question deep dive into how 628 organizations across different geographies and types are navigating cloud native adoption.

Hilary Carter, Senior Vice President of Research at the Linux Foundation, explains what went into gathering this comprehensive dataset and why the findings reveal both extraordinary progress and persistent challenges.

Building a Global Research Foundation

The scale of the CNCF survey reflects the maturity of the cloud native ecosystem itself. With 628 respondents from different geographies and organization types—end users and vendors alike—The Linux Foundation cast a deliberately wide net. “We encourage respondents from all across the world—different geographies and different types of organizations, including end-user organizations and vendor organizations—to participate and contribute their insights by taking our survey,” Carter explains.

This wasn’t a passive data collection exercise. The Linux Foundation leveraged established distribution channels—CNCF email lists, Linux Foundation communications, and social channels—to actively socialize the study and maximize participation. The result was what Carter describes as “a high level of engagement from participants in the cloud native community,” with respondents answering a vast majority of the 65 questions posed.

That engagement matters. In research, response quality is just as important as response quantity. When participants are deeply engaged with the subject matter and willing to invest time in comprehensive answers, the resulting data provides genuine insight rather than superficial snapshots.

65 Questions Across Five Critical Dimensions

The survey’s structure reveals how far cloud native has evolved as a discipline. Rather than focusing narrowly on technology adoption, the 2025 survey spanned five key dimensions: demographics, cloud native practices, specific technologies like containers and Kubernetes, emerging areas like generative AI and security, and critically, organizational maturity.

“The survey comprised demographic questions, as well as questions about cloud native, containers, Kubernetes, generative AI, security projects, and an important section on maturity,” Carter notes. That maturity section represents a significant evolution in how the industry thinks about cloud native success. It’s no longer sufficient to ask whether organizations have adopted Kubernetes. The more relevant question is how mature their practices are, what cultural changes have accompanied technical adoption, and where they sit on the journey from exploration to innovation.

This multi-dimensional approach allows for nuanced analysis. Organizations can benchmark themselves not just on technology choices but on the practices, processes, and cultural factors that determine whether cloud native adoption delivers real value.

The Dual Reality: Progress and Persistent Challenges

What makes the 2025 CNCF survey findings particularly valuable is their balanced perspective. Carter doesn’t sugarcoat the results. “We’re really excited about the results because they demonstrate an extraordinary level of maturity in cloud native adoption and cloud native practices,” she says. “But it’s not all roses. There are opportunities where we can make improvements and provide strategic insight for the project community.”

This honest assessment reflects the reality most infrastructure leaders experience: significant progress alongside persistent complexity. Cloud native technologies have matured dramatically. Adoption rates have soared. Best practices are more clearly defined than ever before. Yet challenges remain—around complexity, cultural change management, security, and optimizing the growing ecosystem of tools and projects.

For research to be useful, it needs to acknowledge both success and struggle. Organizations looking to benchmark their own cloud native journey need to see where they’re succeeding relative to peers, but also where the industry collectively still has work to do. The CNCF survey provides both perspectives.

Why Multi-Year Research Matters

The Linux Foundation has been running this survey in partnership with CNCF for years, examining not just cloud native practices broadly but also specific areas like cloud native security and the intersection of generative AI with cloud native technologies. This longitudinal approach allows the research team to track trends over time, identify accelerating or decelerating adoption patterns, and understand how organizational maturity evolves.

Carter emphasizes this ongoing relationship: “Linux Foundation Research has been working with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for years, running their annual survey and a whole bunch of other studies.” That continuity matters. Year-over-year data reveals whether challenges are being resolved, whether new pain points are emerging, and how the ecosystem is responding to both technological advances and organizational needs.

What This Means for Infrastructure Leaders

For organizations navigating cloud native adoption, the 2025 CNCF survey offers critical benchmarking data grounded in real-world practices from over 600 peers. The geographic and organizational diversity of respondents means the findings aren’t skewed toward a particular market segment or maturity stage. Whether you’re a large enterprise, mid-market company, or startup, you can find relevant comparison points.

The inclusion of that maturity assessment is particularly valuable. Understanding where your organization sits on the maturity spectrum—and what practices separate explorers from adopters, practitioners, and innovators—provides a roadmap for improvement. It shifts the conversation from “Have we adopted cloud native?” to “How effectively are we using cloud native practices to drive business value?”

The survey’s findings on emerging areas like generative AI also help organizations anticipate where cloud native infrastructure is headed. As AI workloads increasingly run on Kubernetes and cloud native platforms, understanding how peers are navigating that intersection becomes strategically important.

The Research Continues

The 2025 CNCF Annual Cloud Native Survey represents a snapshot of an ecosystem in rapid evolution. With 628 organizations contributing insights across 65 questions, it’s one of the most comprehensive assessments of cloud native adoption available. But as Carter notes, it’s also a starting point for deeper analysis and strategic insight that can help the project community continue improving.

For infrastructure leaders, the takeaway is clear: cloud native maturity isn’t just about technology adoption. It’s about practices, culture, and continuous improvement—and now there’s robust data to guide that journey.