Kubernetes Alternatives: What the Latest Search Trends are Signaling

Search is the signal.

If you want a glimpse into where things are headed, just take a peek at this graph of search interest for Kubernetes Alternatives from the last few years.

Cycle is a direct Kubernetes alternative, and having been part of building this company since 2018, I can tell you that this graph is so much more accurate than you can ever imagine. Until late 2021, talking about not using Kubernetes was met with an almost dogmatic intransigence. Then as the market started to take finances, budget, and spend more seriously, the total cost of ownership for Kubernetes came into question. It felt like at that point, around the end of 2021, the ice broke, and there was a deep renewed interest in Kubernetes alternatives.

Interestingly the CNCF survey from 2022 aligns almost perfectly with the search trending.

Why is Interest Growing for Kubernetes Alternatives?

Once the trend is clear, the natural next question is what caused developers and organizations to start searching?

Kubernetes Is Powerful But Almost Always Overkill

Kubernetes was built to solve the problems Google was having scaling some of the biggest products in tech: Search, YouTube, etc.

Most teams adopting Kubernetes don't have Google size problems and they certainly don't have Google sized budgets. And yet, they inherit Google sized complexity, multi-component control planes that have to be independently scaled, deeply nested YAML, and an ever expanding list of plugins, sidecars, and services that need to be pieced together for a working solution.

Security and Stability Risks are Real

Redhat notes in their 2024 report:

And much of this has to do with misconfiguration and user error. Which is understandable given how hard it is to enforce standards at the platform level when using something like Kubernetes. Nonetheless, these security incidents can't be taken lightly and are pushing many organizations toward Kubernetes alternatives, which can be seen in the increased search volume.

Infrastructure Waste

A post last year from The Stack unveiled:

This article highlights how many organizations rely on overprovisioning as a safety net to ensure uptime, which is necessary just to keep the lights on.That much waste at the control plane level (as that usage metric is based on control plane nodes' utilization of resources) can be a telling indicator as to why organizations are looking for an alternative and why Cycle's fully managed, federated control plane is so attractive.

What if We Didn't Use Kubernetes?

For many of you who have read this far into the post, I can only imagine you're having this thought. What if we don't use (or didn't use) Kubernetes?

I can tell you this. Many of the organizations coming to Cycle and choosing to either ditch Kubernetes or not to adopt it… are seeing value from the following ideas.

Reduced Complexity

Stitching together all the pieces of the Kubernetes cluster isn't really the hard part. It's maintaining them, updating them, and just having any level of organizational coherence in understanding even the internal platform you've built. With Cycle, the platform is opinionated and standardized so these things come "out of the box".

Cost Predictability

Believe it or not, the statistic mentioned above on control planes being overprovisioned drives costs up. Some orgs are managing hundreds or thousands of clusters… thats a lot of waste. By moving to Cycle and adopting our model of fully managed, federated control plane, teams can avoid the overprovisioning of these resources.

Operational Confidence

Cycle users enjoy having their infrastructure always up to date, not waiting on or meeting about potential upgrades. Security patches come in quickly if a CVE is released. The platform is designed by developers for developers, so not being a DevOps expert doesn't mean you can't quickly pick up and use Cycle. For many organizations, this is a meaningful change and massively increases the bus factor.

Renewed Focus on Product

Teams move faster because they're not stuck writing Helm charts, debugging service meshes, or trying to keep up with CNCF's weekly wave of new tools. With all these ops issues off their plate, there can be a renewed focus on the core product.

A Growing Movement

The Kubernetes alternative trend isn't just a short term spike in search interest, it's a growing movement of developers, teams, and organizations rethinking what they really need from their infrastructure.

At Cycle, we're here to help.

If you're considering a switch from Kubernetes for some or all of your workloads or considering a move to a more advanced container orchestration platform but don't want the complexity that Kubernetes brings to the table, we'd love to hear from you!

💡 Interested in trying the Cycle platform? Create your account today! Want to drop in and have a chat with the Cycle team? We'd love to have you join our public Cycle Slack community!