In past episodes of The New Builders podcast, we've covered the rise of microservices and the associated challenges of a distributed app architecture. To address these challenges and strengthen the cohesiveness of the container ecosystem that powers microservices, the Linux Foundation recently formed the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). We caught up with CNCF Executive Director Dan Kohn (@dankohn1) in the latest edition of The New Builders, to explore the evolving role of containerization in software development and what the future of cloud-native, distributed architectures looks like.

We discuss the origins of the CNCF and its goals (00:16), how a "cloud native" container approach is different from the older VM approach to cloud (1:25), why containers - which have existed for a while - only took off in a major way in the last few years (7:42), how the CNCF is making microservices simpler for developers (14:00), happenings at the upcoming first CloudNativeDay event (20:34) and more.

The New Builders podcast listeners can obtain special discounts for the upcoming CloudNativeDay (Toronto, Aug. 25) and CloudNativeCon (Seattle, Nov. 8-9) events:

• For a discounted CloudNativeDay pass, register here with code CND16IBMDW.
• For a discounted CloudNativeCon pass, register here with code CNC16IBMDW.

You can find new episodes of The New Builders on iTunes, SoundCloud and developerWorks TV. Find out more about IBM Cloud Data Services at IBM.biz/forbuilders. Contact hosts Doug Flora and Jim Young on Twitter (@DSFlora, @JW_Young) or email ([email protected], [email protected]).

The show’s music is provided by School for Robots. Check them out at schoolforrobots.bandcamp.com!