The demand for cloud computing has been consistently increasing over the last few years, and today, a standard organization uses 254 SaaS apps on average. The need for cloud-native microservices is higher than ever, with more than 70% of development managers, IT executives, and developers adopting cloud-native principles for faster deployment velocity. This includes switching to cloud-native techniques such as GitOps and containers for more scalable and flexible solutions.Â
To promote and enhance the adoption of cloud-native computing practices, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has been collaborating with multiple open-source projects based on Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and many more. Several groundbreaking CNCF projects are set to redefine the limitations of cloud-native development. This article dives into the emerging trends in 2024 and what to look for in 2025.
Cert-manager
Cert-manager is a robust, open-source X.509 certificate controller for Kubernetes and OpenShift workloads. It is crafted to automate the process of managing and issuing TLS certificates for Kubernetes clusters. By integrating across multiple certificate issuers, Cert-manager enables a seamless and secure certificate management system for all cloud-native environments.
Current Trends: Cert-manager is focused on expanding its support across numerous issuers like Let’s Encrypt, HashiCorp Vault, and many more to provide scalable integration options for all Kubernetes users. Developments are underway to improve automation capabilities for streamlining certificate lifecycle management, which will reduce operational overhead for developers and system administrators.
Future Scope: In 2025, the Cert-manager team will use automated certificate renewal and enhanced security mechanisms to update the reliability and security of cloud-native applications.
Dex
Dex is an identity service that provides authentication for other applications using OpenID Connect (OIDC). It bridges various identity providers such as LDAP, SAML, OAuth2, etc. Dex provides Kubernetes clusters with the ability to seamlessly integrate with identity management solutions for enhanced security and effective user management.
Current Trends: Dex is moving towards improving its scalability and compatibility framework to accommodate larger user bases and develop the ability to integrate with more identity solution providers like Google, GitHub, and LDAP. This will assist organizations looking to streamline their authentication process in extremely complex cloud-native environments.
Future Scope: By 2025, the Dex development team hopes to enunciate newer updates to improve stability and performance and enhanced integration capabilities to become a critical component for enhancing user authentication and secure identity management in Kubernetes-based infrastructures.
Etcd
Etcd is a robust and consistent distributed key-value store that establishes a secure way to store data in hierarchical directories (similar to a filesystem) and performs read-write operations using simple HTTP tools such as Curl. This data can be accessed across a distributed system or a cluster of machines. It is a vital component for Kubernetes for storing configuration data, enhancing service discovery, and providing data consistency.
Current Trends: In 2024, Etcd has consistently improved stability and performance to address the needs of large-scale, distributed systems. The enhancements apply to improved data consistency, higher fault tolerance, and increased performance under high-load conditions.
Future Scope: From 2025, the focus will be on improving reliability and efficiency in more cumbersome and extensive cloud-native deployments. This will make Etc indispensable to the cloud-native infrastructure, becoming a comprehensive and scalable solution, a prerequisite for modern applications.
Notary
The Notary Project provides enterprise-grade solutions and cross-industry standards for securing software supply chains. It provides CLI tools for signing and verifying content using authentic container images for Kubernetes and other OCI artifacts. This helps secure the integrity and validity of container images and other content in the software supply chain.Â
Current Trends: The development of the Notary Project in 2024 has been primarily around enhancing its security features and ease of use. The intent is to make it easy for developers to integrate content signing and verification into their workflows. This involves improvements in the user interface, providing better documentation and seamless integration with popular container registries.
Future Scope: As they head into 2025, Notary is all set to introduce advanced security mechanisms and more robust usability enhancements – enabling organizations to maintain high security and compliance standards in their container environments.
Open-Policy Agent (OPA)
OPA is a general-purpose policy-based control engine for cloud-native environments. It unifies policy enforcement across various systems with the help of high-level declarative language and provides flexible, fine-grained control for admin-level users. It enables users to define policies for enforcement across applications and infrastructure components.
Current Trends: In the current year, OPA is all set to provide continuous updates to improve performance and introduce new policy use cases. This will enable organizations to deploy and enforce complex policies across diverse environments while maintaining security and compliance standards.
Future Scope: From 2025 onwards, OPA is determined to expand its policy use cases even further, offering more granular control and improved integration with other cloud-native tools for a more consistent policy enforcement mechanism across organizations’ cloud-native infrastructure.Â
A brief retrospect and what lies aheadÂ
173 projects, 827 members, 220k contributors – all part of 1 name – CNCF. The CNCF landscape is all set to take leaps and strides in the coming years. With organizations across the globe integrating cloud-native applications as part of their digital infrastructure, the CNCF projects will continue to become indispensable and an integral part of the cloud-native infrastructure, particularly in the Kubernetes space. In this article, we have mentioned some noteworthy CNCF projects that are at the cutting edge of cloud-native technology with advancements in addressing key aspects of application development, deployment, monitoring, and security. As cloud-native adoption grows, these projects will play pivotal roles in sculpting the future of cloud computing.
