One of the biggest enterprise tech conferences of 2018 recently came to a close in Voxus’ home region of Seattle. The conference is called KubeCon and outside of the deep techies, you may not be too familiar with the it… but you should. KubeCon rapidly grew from 500 attendees in 2015 to an estimated 8000 attendees at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 (the formal name for the North American version of KubeCon), selling out its venue at the Washington State Convention Center. That’s a 1500 percent attendance increase in four years of KubeCon North America.
Image Credit: Cloud Native Computing Foundation
KubeCon IS Kubernetes
KubeCon is the de-facto official Kubernetes developer and user conference. For those of you not familiar with Kubernetes (also referred to as k8s), the open-source system automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Think of Kubernetes as plumbing for running enterprise-class software in the cloud. Google originally developed Kubernetes as an internal project called Borg and open sourced it in 2014. Since then the massive enterprise adoption of Kubernetes has been well documented, as has a recent acquisition binge of companies focused on K8s like Red Hat and Voxus client Heptio.
Its Origin
The KubeAcademy organized and ran the inaugural KubeCon conference in November 2015 in San Francisco. Shortly after the Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) began hosting KubeCon. Since then KubeCon expanded outside of North America to Europe and China.
Its Future
Much has been discussed about the future of KubeCon. Has it gotten too big? Is Kubernetes just a flash in the pan? Will KubeCon continue to grow?
My prediction? If the mergers and acquisitions that Kubernetes played a large part in 2018 continue, KubeCon will continue its astronomical growth. According to the Linux Foundation, 2018 marked a tipping point for open source, which drove more than $65 billion in mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs (again which Kubernetes played a large part in).
Whether or not KubeCon continues to skyrocket in popularity will be seen at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 in San Diego November 18-21. See you there?!