New Survey Finds Enterprise IT Users Doubled Down on Kubernetes to Support Rapid Pivots in Business Amid Pandemic

Mountain View, Calif. – May 4, 2021 — Portworx® by Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the most complete Kubernetes Data Services Platform, today released findings from its annual Kubernetes Adoption Survey¹. The survey assesses the mass adoption and evolution of Kubernetes usage among enterprise users in the last 12 months, in addition to the impact of the pandemic on IT users’ attitudes towards their jobs. Supported by an overwhelming response from IT users, the findings suggest that despite budget cuts, enterprises are rapidly turning to Kubernetes to drive faster business results and, overall, reported happier, well-paid IT employees.

For over a year, the pandemic has challenged businesses everywhere to experiment and innovate their offerings to cater to evolving customer demands for convenience and simplicity, as well as supporting employees in the new world of remote work. In the midst of it all, Kubernetes has played a critical role. The latest annual survey commissioned by Portworx found that 68 percent of IT professionals said they increased their usage of Kubernetes as a result of the pandemic, primarily to accelerate their deployment of new applications and increase their use of automation - both of which are critical to meeting customers and employees where they are today. What’s more, despite added working pressures, most IT professionals (52 percent) enjoyed their jobs more than they did before, with those most familiar with Kubernetes tending to earn higher salaries.

Key highlights from the annual Kubernetes Adoption Survey include:

• The Role of Kubernetes is Expanding: Enterprises are increasingly leveraging Kubernetes to develop and test artificial intelligence models, and to manage and automate storage, network, and compute infrastructure. Nearly 90 percent of IT professionals expect Kubernetes to play a larger role in the management of their infrastructure over the next 2-3 years.
• Speed of Deployment is King: Amid the pandemic, businesses had to quickly adapt to a fast-changing world by rolling out new apps to better serve customers, building algorithms to reorganize disrupted supply chains, and more. Almost 75 percent of IT professionals confirmed the top benefit of adopting Kubernetes is the ability to deploy new apps more quickly, followed by supporting program areas that need to evolve (48 percent), supporting changes in business strategy (45 percent), and helping increase revenue or profits (44 percent).
• Kubernetes is a Cost-Saver: 2020 created financial uncertainty for many businesses, and minimizing wasted expenditure became a priority. Almost half (46 percent) of respondents said they increased their use of Kubernetes last year to help reduce IT costs. Of those, 27 percent expected to reduce IT costs by 31 percent or more.
• Kubernetes Knowledge Impacts Salary: IT staff who are the most familiar with Kubernetes tend to earn higher salaries than those who are less familiar. Sixty-four percent who were “very knowledgeable” about their company’s Kubernetes use reported their annual gross income at between $100,000 and $250,000, versus 59 percent who said they were “knowledgeable” and 50 percent who were “somewhat knowledgeable.”

[1] Conducted online by Market Cube on behalf of Portworx by Pure Storage, this survey was fielded among 500 respondents with significant knowledge of their company’s Kubernetes usage, working full-time in IT roles at companies with at least 500 employees.

About Portworx by Pure Storage

Portworx, acquired by Pure Storage in October 2020, is the container storage company enterprises rely on to manage mission critical data services in containers. By enabling data availability, data security, backup and disaster recovery for Kubernetes-based applications running on-prem or across clouds, Portworx has helped dozens of Global 2000 companies such as Carrefour, Comcast, GE Digital, Lufthansa, T-Mobile, and SAIC run containerized data services in production. Portworx partners with Amazon, Google, IBM, VMware, and other leading enterprise software companies to accelerate container adoption. For more information, visit portworx.com or follow @portwx.