What’s Next for Cloud Foundry?
New Leadership at the Cloud Foundry Foundation
Craig McLuckie, formerly a Google employee and co-founder of the Kubernetes project, and currently VMware’s VP of R&D following the Heptio acquisition, has recently been appointed chairman of the Cloud Foundry Foundation’s Board of Directors.
This appointment follows Paul Fazzone’s chairmanship, which began in April 2020. Since then, the Foundation has experienced a shift in leadership, as Chip Childers departed from his role as executive director in August, with the position remaining unfilled.
A Focus on Technical Oversight
Instead of directly replacing the executive director, the Cloud Foundry Foundation has chosen to prioritize its technical oversight committee and board of directors. Consequently, McLuckie’s role represents the closest equivalent to the previous executive director position within the current organizational structure.
Despite his significant contributions to the creation and donation of Kubernetes to the CNCF, McLuckie’s involvement in the Cloud Foundry ecosystem was previously limited.
Interconnected Ecosystems
However, both foundations operate under the Linux Foundation umbrella, creating inherent connections. Furthermore, Cloud Foundry’s recent evolution towards Kubernetes integration, alongside the influence of Cloud Foundry-originated buildpacks on the Kubernetes landscape, has fostered substantial interaction between the communities.
VMware’s acquisition of Pivotal further strengthens these links between the various groups involved.
Motivations for Involvement
According to McLuckie, his increased consideration of a role within the Cloud Foundry ecosystem began approximately six months prior to his appointment, initiating the process that led to his current position.
“The acquisition of Pivotal by VMware presented an opportunity to thoroughly examine the innovations within the Cloud Foundry ecosystem, which served as a foundational technology for many cloud-native concepts,” he stated.
Cloud Foundry, predating Kubernetes, offered a distinct approach to application development, orchestration, and deployment. The acquisition allowed for closer engagement with a community that pioneered container-packaged delivery and established an abstraction layer enabling developers to seamlessly transition from their IDE to a production environment.
Bridging Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes
The current objective, McLuckie explained, is to integrate the strengths of both technologies. This involves leveraging Cloud Foundry’s successful developer experience and combining it with Kubernetes’ infrastructure abstraction capabilities.
Reflecting this goal, the Foundation is set to release a beta version of a new Cloud Foundry experience on Kubernetes in the first quarter of 2022. This project represents a collaborative effort involving organizations such as VMware, SAP, and IBM, aiming to establish a unified path forward.
“Many developers aren’t necessarily interested in constantly exploring new technologies,” McLuckie noted. “A significant number simply want to relax after work. Cloud Foundry provides a straightforward and accessible experience, alleviating the operational complexities of running applications in production.
We are now providing a means to maintain that experience while utilizing an abstraction layer that is becoming the standard for multi-cloud deployments.”
A Transformation in Organizational Structure
Beyond specific projects, the organization is undergoing a significant transformation, initiated roughly a year ago, shifting from a vendor-centric model to one that encourages broader developer contributions. This new approach aims to simplify the process for individual developers to contribute to the ecosystem without navigating extensive procedures previously required for becoming an open-source committer.
“Cloud Foundry has evolved from a foundation primarily focused on the commercial interests of organizations building products around the technology,” McLuckie explained. “As with any foundation, there are inherent tensions between vendors.”
The Foundation will now concentrate on three key areas: supporting the contributor community, regardless of their employer; enhancing support for end-users of the open-source Cloud Foundry version; and fostering collaboration among vendors to drive innovation and the evolution of cloud-native technologies, such as buildpacks, originating from the Cloud Foundry ecosystem.
“This represents a new era for the technology, prioritizing the needs of both organizations utilizing it and the developers contributing to it in a transparent and equitable manner,” McLuckie concluded.