The State of Kubernetes in 2019 - Big Data Analytics for Market Research

by Torsten Volk, Managing Research Director, Hybrid Cloud, Software Defined Infrastructure and Machine Learning

EMA’s new and entirely data-driven approach toward market research is a response to the rapidly increasing hunger of investors, product teams, and marketing executives for primary data on customer pain points, technology usage patterns, and future investment priorities.

 

“The State of Kubernetes in 2019” is EMA’s first research report that is fully based on the new EMA Market X-Ray data analytics platform. This report is nearly ready to launch, and I want to use it as an example to demonstrate the tremendous current advantages and future potential of analyzing customer requirements based on the observation of how actual IT operators and developers solve their most important problems today.

100% Real-Life Data: Looking Over the Shoulders of IT Operators and Developers

All of the over 100 charts created within the scope of this research effort are entirely built upon data that was blended from today’s standard collaboration platforms and forums for developers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and business users. For example, the official Kubernetes forum sends developers to StackOverflow for Kubernetes-related application development challenges and to GitHub for submitting tickets and requesting new features. 

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100% Transparency - You Can Do it at Home

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EMA created this chart based on a custom query against the complete GitHub source of operational data, based on the following query criteria:

  1. Repo Name = kubernetes
  2. Priority = critical
  3. Type = issues_and_comments
  4. Incident category is derived by filtering the description parameter in the payload field of the GitHub event record by “network,” “security,” ”storage,” and ”server.”

This query resulted in the following data table that shows the absolute quantities of critical issues for each topic.

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Separating the Viewpoints of IT Operations and Software Developers

The following chart amalgamates data from both sources when looking for the most critical Kubernetes-related challenges for developers (topics discussed on StackOverflow) and for more IT operations-centric professionals (operational discussions on Reddit). We can see that IT and DevOps professionals place their highest focus on server-related topics, while software developers mostly struggle with network-centric issues.

4-DevOps-and-Ops-Priorities

 

Exploring Issues Based on the Most Recent Enterprise Challenges

Enterprise customers, investors, and IT product teams all share the same challenge: permanently staying at the pulse of customers. Believing implicit assumptions, even if they were correct in the past, is the biggest danger for all of us. The EMA data platform includes explorative topic mapping for our analysts and customers to immediately pick up on what occupies customers’ minds today.

 

Topic Map - Kubernetes Networking-Related Developer Challenges in 2019

This topic map shows a comprehensive overview of Kubernetes networking-related developer pain points in 2019, based on developer questions asked on StackOverflow. You can explore this map all by yourself right now, and we will deliver a detailed drilldown inside the upcoming “The State of Kubernetes in 2019” EMA research report shortly.

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Topic Map - Kubernetes Networking-Related IT Operators’ Challenges in 2019

This chart shows the Kubernetes networking challenge from the perspective of IT operators, SREs, and DevOps-centric job roles.

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What About Twitter Users? Let’s Look at the Last 10,000 Tweets

For more context, we can look at the Kubernetes networking challenge based on 10,000 Tweets from the previous week.

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What are People Searching for on Google Within a Kubernetes Context?

It is also interesting to look at the most popular Google searches within the context of Google users searching for the keyword “Kubernetes.”

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Critical Issues Submitted on GitHub in 2019

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The Hottest Kubernetes-Related Projects in Terms of GitHub Activity Today

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In a Nutshell

This summary only scratches the surface of what is possible when leveraging real-life operational and developer data for market research and product comparison. “The State of Kubernetes in 2019” will launch after the “summer break,” and you will be able to evaluate for yourself the amount and detail of market knowledge the new EMA data platform brings to our customers and subscribers.

Follow my blog and Twitter handle (@torstenvolk) and stay tuned on any news in regard to the EMA data platform and the “The State of Kubernetes in 2019” EMA research report.