I have to admit, heading out to London for 2025 KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, I thought I might see the beginning of the downward trend for the event about building, deploying, and managing next-generation cloud applications and infrastructures.
After all, the show turned 10 last year, and, in my experience, that’s when conferences start to show their age. Plus, there has been lots of news around the effect of AI on application development, and while KubeCon isn’t directly about dev, much of its focus is on applications and services.
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But boy, was I wrong. In fact, KubeCon 2025 in London was packed, with over 12,000 attendees. Getting through the crowds at the massive London ExCel center at times made me feel like an infected Brad Pitt trying to cut through an oncoming horde of zombies in World War Z. And good luck getting into any of the keynotes even a little bit late, with every seat in the main hall and overflow balconies taken.
So, what’s behind the enthusiasm for core infrastructure and cloud technology? One key to success may be that Kubernetes and other core cloud-native technologies are proving fairly AI-resistant, especially compared with regular application coding.
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The learning and information from a KubeCon event are focused on deployment, management, and integration issues that require expertise and an understanding of complex technologies. Plus, the rapid pace of change in cloud native can be tough for even recent models to keep up with, and anyone using AI will probably be building very out-of-date systems.
On top of these concerns, Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies are key to running and building AI workloads, with many top systems based on cloud-native infrastructures. In fact, OpenAI was building its systems on Kubernetes back in 2016.
Like last year’s event, much of the discussion around AI was eminently practical and focused on key areas like automation and analytics, which are also top use cases identified by Aberdeen research.
Another interesting trend at KubeCon London was the return of the private cloud. Now, private cloud never went away but its importance had definitely waned, with one major technology vendor telling me a couple of years ago that they weren’t even mentioning private cloud to clients anymore, with most of their messaging focused on hybrid cloud.
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However, in many of my meetings and demos at KubeCon London, discussions around private cloud were front and center. Two major trends are driving this resurgence.
The first trend, as with many things in technology, is the rise of AI. In our research at Aberdeen, we find that many businesses are working to build small language models or do internal inferencing to utilize their data in AI.
When businesses take this approach, they quickly realize they must protect and secure this vital private data, which requires avoiding public cloud AI and building AI infrastructures using private cloud.
The other big trend driving the return of private cloud, as was mentioned in many sessions and discussions at KubeCon Europe, was the importance of digital sovereignty. With global uncertainty on all fronts, and many businesses concerned about who could demand access to their data in clouds around the globe, I heard from many vendors and businesses looking to deploy modernized private cloud infrastructures to ensure data integrity and keep their information protected.
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This trend shows the increased importance of the private cloud and the maturity of newer implementations of this provision. While the private cloud started as mainly a way to bring cloud-based controls to on-prem systems, it now gives businesses all of the agility and flexibility of the cloud with much greater control and security.
As businesses look to modernize their infrastructure, protect their data, and leverage technologies like AI, Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies will most likely stay front and center. It will be interesting to see at this fall’s event in Atlanta if KubeCon will continue to grow and stay vital.
