Scaling Up Enterprise Kubernetes - Moving Microservices from Pilot to Platform
Enterprises are embracing the principle of Kubernetes, but many have not deployed it at scale. Only 10% of enterprise respondents to GigaOm research, carried out earlier this year, use the orchestrator in production and have implemented it as a platform throughout their organization.

Kubernetes is open source software for deploying, scaling and managing containerized applications. As an orchestrator, it handles the work of scheduling containers on a cluster and also manages the workloads to ensure they run as you intended. Kubernetes is now the de facto standard for orchestrating microservices in the cloud. Many enterprises are considering it as a primary means for delivering software across their organization. While many are embracing the principle of Kubernetes, few have deployed it at scale. Only 10% of enterprise respondents to GigaOm research, conducted earlier this year, use the orchestrator in production and have implemented it as a platform throughout across IT and development teams.
But these are still the early days, and as technology decision makers look to expand upon successful pilots or smaller deployments, the question becomes: after a successful pilot, what comes next? Planning firm-wide deployments can be daunting. There is a lot to get right and, many pitfalls along the way. The next steps will depend on where an organization is on its journey, the context, and the business goals as a whole.
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In this report, Jon Collins of GigOm considers the elements needed to scale up Kubernetes, and to ensure success, both now and in the years to come. Aimed at developers and development managers, application operations professionals, site reliability engineers (SREs), technical architects, and IT strategists, this report deep dives on the following topics:
- Benefits and challenges– what is gained by scaling up Kubernetes and microservices for the broader enterprise, post-pilot.
- Setting the strategy- how to outline a microservices-based infrastructure that delivers business value.
- Defining the platform- the technology choices you need to make as well as the operational considerations to ensure a flexible target for developers.
- Organizational criteria- how to ensure that the right non-technical elements are in place to move from an on-premises way of thinking to a cloud-native approach.
- Planning for success- a summary of the stages required to deliver on the potential of Kubernetes-based microservices.