The New Stack Podcast

At Google Cloud Next, Bobby Allen, Group Product Manager for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), emphasized GKE’s foundational role in supporting AI platforms. While AI dominates current tech conversations, Allen highlighted that cloud-native infrastructure like Kubernetes is what enables AI workloads to function efficiently. GKE powers key Google services like Vertex AI and is trusted by organizations including DeepMind, gaming companies, and healthcare providers for AI model training and inference. 

Allen explained that GKE offers scalability, elasticity, and support for AI-specific hardware like GPUs and TPUs, making it ideal for modern workloads. He noted that Kubernetes was built with capabilities—like high availability and secure orchestration—that are now essential for AI deployment. Looking forward, GKE aims to evolve into a model router, allowing developers to access the right AI model based on function, not vendor, streamlining the development experience. Allen described GKE as offering maximum control with minimal technical debt, future-proofed by Google’s continued investment in open source and scalable architecture.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest insights with Google Cloud: 

Google Kubernetes Engine Customized for Faster AI Work

KubeCon Europe: How Google Will Evolve Kubernetes in the AI Era

Apache Ray Finds a Home on the Google Kubernetes Engine

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Without this, developers waste time managing infrastructure instead of focusing on code. VMware addresses this with VCF, a pre-integrated Kubernetes solution that includes components like Harbor, Valero, and Istio, all managed by VMware. While some worry about added complexity from abstraction, Turner dismissed concerns about virtualization overhead, pointing to benchmarks showing 98.3% of bare metal performance for virtualized AI workloads. He emphasized that AI is driving nearly half of Kubernetes deployments, prompting VMware’s partnership with Nvidia to support GPU virtualization. 

Turner also highlighted VMware's open source leadership, contributing to major projects and ensuring Kubernetes remains cloud-independent and standards-based. VMware aims to simplify Kubernetes and AI workload management while staying committed to the open ecosystem.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest insights with VMware 

Has VMware Finally Caught Up With Kubernetes?

VMware’s Golden Path

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Prequel is launching a new developer-focused service aimed at democratizing software error detection—an area typically dominated by large cloud providers. Co-founded by Lyndon Brown and Tony Meehan, both former NSA engineers, Prequel introduces a community-driven observability approach centered on Common Reliability Enumerations (CREs). CREs categorize recurring production issues, helping engineers detect, understand, and communicate problems without reinventing solutions or working in isolation. Their open-source tools, cre and prereq, allow teams to build and share detectors that catch bugs and anti-patterns in real time—without exposing sensitive data, thanks to edge processing using WebAssembly.

The urgency behind Prequel’s mission stems from the rapid pace of AI-driven development, increased third-party code usage, and rising infrastructure costs. Traditional observability tools may surface symptoms, but Prequel aims to provide precise problem definitions and actionable insights. While observability giants like Datadog and Splunk dominate the market, Brown and Meehan argue that engineers still feel overwhelmed by data and underpowered in diagnostics—something they believe CREs can finally change.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest Observability insights 

Why Consolidating Observability Tools Is a Smart Move

Building an Observability Culture: Getting Everyone Onboard 

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At Arm, open source is the default approach, with proprietary software requiring justification, says Andrew Wafaa, fellow and senior director of software communities. Speaking at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Wafaa emphasized Arm’s decade-long commitment to open source, highlighting its investment in key projects like the Linux kernel, GCC, and LLVM. This investment is strategic, ensuring strong support for Arm’s architecture through vital tools and system software.

Wafaa also challenged the hype around GPUs in AI, asserting that CPUs—especially those enhanced with Arm’s Scalable Matrix Extension (SME2) and Scalable Vector Extension (SVE2)—are often more suitable for inference workloads. CPUs offer greater flexibility, and Arm’s innovations aim to reduce dependency on expensive GPU fleets.

On the AI framework front, Wafaa pointed to PyTorch as the emerging hub, likening its ecosystem-building potential to Kubernetes. As a PyTorch Foundation board member, he sees PyTorch becoming the central open source platform in AI development, with broad community and industry backing.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest insights about Arm: 

Edge Wars Heat Up as Arm Aims to Outflank Intel, Qualcomm 

Arm: See a Demo About Migrating a x86-Based App to ARM64

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In today’s uncertain economy, businesses are tightening costs, including for Kubernetes (K8s) operations, which are notoriously difficult to optimize. Yodar Shafrir, co-founder and CEO of ScaleOps, explained at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe that dynamic, cloud-native applications have constantly shifting loads, making resource allocation complex. 

Engineers must provision enough resources to handle spikes without overspending, but in large production clusters with thousands of applications, manual optimization often fails. This leads to 70–80% resource waste and performance issues. Developers typically prioritize application performance over operational cost, and AI workloads further strain resources. Existing optimization tools offer static recommendations that quickly become outdated due to the dynamic nature of workloads, risking downtime. 

Shafrir emphasized that real-time, fully automated solutions like ScaleOps' platform are crucial. By dynamically adjusting container-level resources based on real-time consumption and business metrics, ScaleOps improves application reliability and eliminates waste. Their approach shifts Kubernetes management from static to dynamic resource allocation. Listen to the full episode for more insights and ScaleOps' roadmap.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest in scaling Kubernetes and managing operational costs: 

ScaleOps Adds Predictive Horizontal Scaling, Smart Placement 

ScaleOps Dynamically Right-Sizes Containers at Runtime 

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Heroku has been undergoing a major transformation, re-platforming its entire Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering over the past year and a half. This ambitious effort, dubbed “Fir,” will soon reach general availability. According to Betty Junod, CMO and SVP at Heroku (owned by Salesforce), the overhaul includes a shift to Kubernetes and OCI standards, reinforcing Heroku’s commitment to open source. 

The platform now features Heroku Cloud Native Buildpacks, which let developers create container images without Dockerfiles. Originally built on Ruby on Rails and predating Docker and AWS, Heroku now supports eight programming languages. The company has also deepened its open source engagement by becoming a platinum member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), contributing to projects like OpenTelemetry. Additionally, Heroku has open sourced its Twelve-Factor Apps methodology, inviting the community to help modernize it to address evolving needs such as secrets management and workload identity. This signals a broader effort to align Heroku’s future with the cloud native ecosystem. 

Learn more from The New Stack about Heroku's approach to Platform-as-a-Service:

Return to PaaS: Building the Platform of Our Dreams

Heroku Moved Twelve-Factor Apps to Open Source. What’s Next?

How Heroku Is Positioned To Help Ops Engineers in the GenAI Era

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In this episode of The New Stack Makers, recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Alex Williams speaks with Ville Aikas, Chainguard founder and early Kubernetes contributor. They reflect on the evolution of container security, particularly how early assumptions—like trusting that users would validate container images—proved problematic. Aikas recalls the lack of secure defaults, such as allowing containers to run as root, stemming from the team’s internal Google perspective, which led to unrealistic expectations about external security practices.

The Kubernetes community has since made strides with governance policies, secure defaults, and standard practices like avoiding long-lived credentials and supporting federated authentication. Aikas founded Chainguard to address the need for trusted, minimal, and verifiable container images—offering zero-CVE images, transparent toolchains, and full SBOMs. This security-first philosophy now extends to virtual machines and Java dependencies via Chainguard Libraries.

The discussion also highlights the rising concerns around AI/ML security in Kubernetes, including complex model dependencies, GPU integrations, and potential attack vectors—prompting Chainguard’s move toward locked-down AI images.

Learn more from The New Stack about Container Security and AI

Chainguard Takes Aim At Vulnerable Java Libraries

Clean Container Images: A Supply Chain Security Revolution

Revolutionizing Offensive Security: A New Era With Agentic AI

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In a candid episode of The New Stack Makers, Kubernetes pioneer Kelsey Hightower and AWS’s Eswar Bala explored the evolving relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon London. Hightower highlighted open source's origins as a grassroots movement challenging big vendors, and shared how it gave people—especially those without traditional tech credentials—a way into the industry. Recalling his own journey, Hightower emphasized that open source empowered individuals through contribution over credentials.

Bala traced the early development of Kubernetes and his own transition from building container orchestration systems to launching AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), driven by growing customer demand. The discussion, recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, touched on how open source is now central to enterprise cloud strategies, with AWS not only contributing but creating projects like Karpenter, Cedar, and Kro.

Both speakers agreed that open source's collaborative model—where companies build in public and customers drive innovation—has reshaped the cloud ecosystem, turning former tensions into partnerships built on community-driven progress.

Learn more from The New Stack about the relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software:

The Metamorphosis of Open Source: An Industry in Transition

The Complex Relationship Between Cloud Providers and Open Source

How Open Source Has Turned the Tables on Enterprise Software

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In a rare show of collaboration, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have joined forces on Kro — the Kubernetes Resource Orchestrator — an open source, cloud-agnostic tool designed to simplify custom resource orchestration in Kubernetes. Announced during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Kro was born from strong customer demand for a Kubernetes-native solution that works across cloud providers without vendor lock-in. Nic Slattery, Product Manager at Google and Jesse Butler, Principal Product Manager, AWS shared with The New Stack that unlike many enterprise products, Kro didn’t stem from top-down strategy but from consistent customer "pull" experienced by all three companies. It aims to reduce complexity by allowing platform teams to offer simplified interfaces to developers, enabling resource requests without needing deep service-specific knowledge. Kro also represents a unique cross-company collaboration, driven by a shared mission and open source values. Though still in its alpha stage, the project has already attracted 57 contributors in just seven months. The team is now focused on refining core features and preparing for a production-ready release — all while maintaining a narrowly scoped, community-first approach.

Learn more from The New Stack about KRO:

One Mighty kro; One Giant Leap for Kubernetes Resource Orchestration

Kubernetes Gets a New Resource Orchestrator in the Form of Kro

Orchestrate Cloud Native Workloads With Kro and Kubernetes

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OpenSearch has evolved significantly since its 2021 launch, recently reaching a major milestone with its move to the Linux Foundation. This shift from company-led to foundation-based governance has accelerated community contributions and enterprise adoption, as discussed by NetApp’s Amanda Katona in a New Stack Makers episode recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe. NetApp, an early adopter of OpenSearch following Elasticsearch’s licensing change, now offers managed services on the platform and contributes actively to its development.

Katona emphasized how neutral governance under the Linux Foundation has lowered barriers to enterprise contribution, noting a 56% increase in downloads since the transition and growing interest from developers. OpenSearch 3.0, featuring a Lucene 10 upgrade, promises faster search capabilities—especially relevant as data volumes surge. NetApp’s ongoing investments include work on machine learning plugins and developer training resources.

Katona sees the Linux Foundation’s involvement as key to OpenSearch’s long-term success, offering vendor-neutral governance and reassuring users seeking openness, performance, and scalability in data search and analytics.

Learn more from The New Stack about OpenSearch: 

Report: OpenSearch Bests ElasticSearch at Vector Modeling

AWS Transfers OpenSearch to the Linux Foundation 

OpenSearch: How the Project Went From Fork to Foundation

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