Spectro Cloud released the 2025 State of Production Kubernetes report, the industry’s most in-depth annual look at real-world enterprise Kubernetes use. Independently conducted by research firm Adience, this fifth edition marks the largest study in the series so far.
“Five years in, Kubernetes is no longer an experiment — it’s mission-critical infrastructure,” said Tenry Fu, co-founder and CEO, Spectro Cloud. “This year’s data shows organizations doubling down on AI and edge, even while wrestling legacy VMs into their clusters. The companies that master scale and complexity fastest will create an unbeatable platform for innovation.”
Key 2025 State of Production Kubernetes Report findings
- AI is the top growth driver: 90% of respondents expect their AI workloads on Kubernetes to grow in the next 12 months.
- Multicloud becomes the default model: The average K8s adopter now runs clusters in more than five environments — from all three hyperscalers to on-prem and GPU/sovereign clouds. Placement is driven by multicloud strategies, on-prem repatriation and AI needs.
- Cost is top pain — but AI is the fix. Cost overtook skills and security as the #1 challenge (42%), with 88% reporting a year-on-year rise in total Kubernetes TCO, and growth expected over the next 12 months. Yet 92% say they are investing in AI-powered optimization tools to bring bills back under control .
- Edge hits mainstream, powered by AI: 50% now run production K8s at the edge, and wrestle with new challenges of performance, connectivity and model management for their AI workloads.
- VMware exit ramps multiply as legacy goes cloud-native: With the majority of app workloads on K8s already, 31% plan to migrate their remaining VMs into Kubernetes; 26% already use KubeVirt in production.
- Platform engineering drives business outcomes: Over half say their clusters are still “snowflakes” with highly manual operations.Teams that centralize application deployment in a platform-engineering function outperform every other group on key devops metrics around reliability and speed.
“Enterprises want benchmarks they can trust,” said Chris Wells, Managing Director at Adience, who conducted the research. “Because we ask the same core questions each year, the 2025 study exposes trends as they happen — like the sharp rise in edge clusters and the evolving challenges enterprises face in managing multi-environment clusters.”
Report scope
Spanning five thematic chapters — from confident scale and AI adoption to VM modernization and operational outcomes — the report combines quantitative data with candid interviews from senior technologists in finance, telecoms, healthcare, retail, public sector and manufacturing.
The 2025 State of Production Kubernetes Report report is available for download here.
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Methodology
Adience surveyed 455 professionals in May 2025 via an online questionnaire and deep-dive phone interviews. All respondents work for organizations with ≥250 employees and have direct responsibility for production Kubernetes environments.
