The Operator Day Industry Panel Discussion at Kubecon EU 2022

Find out who the panelists are for the Industry Panel discussion during Operator Day on May 16^th. During this virtual session industry thought leaders will discuss the latest trends and developments about Kubernetes and Operators.

Our panelists are not only thought leaders in various areas of cloud-native technologies, but also work at leading industry organisations. Their practical experience of the challenges to smooth operations in an enterprise setting while moving towards Kubernetes will fuel a lively discussion.

The Operator Day industry panel

	Mark Shuttleworth, is CEO of Canonical, which delivers open source infrastructure, applications and related services to the global technology market.
	Ken Sipe, who is coach for the operator framework at the CNCF and department lead of application and technology architecture at Edward Jones.
	Michael Hausenblas, solution engineering lead at AWS, specialized in Observability and CNCF ambassador.
	Steve George, COO at weaveworks, which is a founding member of the CNCF, focusing on cloud agility with GitOps.
	Tim Hockin, principal software engineer at Google Cloud, specialized in GKE and Anthos.
	Lachlan Evanson, principal program manager on the Open Source team at Azure, CNCF ambassador and emeritus of the Kubernetes Steering Committee.
	David Booth, VP Cloud Native Applications at Canonical. 2x Software Founder (2x exit), Advisor, Angel Investor, CEO, Marketing, Sales, Product Management.

What are operators’ challenges when adopting Kubernetes?

Over the last year Canonical ran two surveys with over a thousand respondents each with interesting results the panel will discuss. The survey about cloud native, Kubernetes and operators resulted in the “Kubernetes and cloud native operations report 2021” we’re very proud of. These reports became very popular as a guide to understand the challenges of the cloud native and Kubernetes industry. Taking the last survey carried out at the end of 2021, we will dig into its data together at the panel discussion.

As an example, in the last year alone, the percentage of respondents who do not use hybrid and multi cloud dropped from 22% to 16%. But what patterns can be observed for hybrid and multi cloud usage? And, what is the status of Kubernetes as the common hybrid cloud platform? Some respondents to the survey said users will prefer bare metal over Kubernetes for intensive workloads. At the same time, we see a rising interest in KubeVirt, a tool for virtual-machine-based workloads. Will KubeVirt drive the adoption of Kubernetes?

But leaving the preference for bare-metal-based solutions for intensive workloads aside, there a still important, commonly perceived adoption challenges:

• Lack of in-house skills
• Not fitting company culture
• Existing incompatible legacy systems

From the listed points above, the coverage of legacy systems is an important challenge. Many established companies appear to have a lot of baggage from past IT activities. The panel will discuss where the Kubernetes community should move to to cover these challenges.

It’s Operator Day – join us!

Let’s not forget that Canonical will host Operator Day on May 16, with plenty more to learn and share for operators at Kubecon. The Kubernetes and cloud native operations report 2021 covers questions on various aspects of operability: how much in-depth control do operators need? Because at the same time, the ‘magic button’ you just have to click once is often the preferred way of operating Kubernetes. Currently, solutions range from scripts to config management or GitOps operations.

About 25% of respondents said that operators are present in their company. And these 25% and the remaining 75% are all invited to register for Operator Day. Attend the panel discussion and other sessions to learn all about recent developments in this space!

Read more about news from Canonical at Kubecon EU 2022