The Kubernetes community might seem robotic in terms of spitting out new iterations of the container orchestrator on a quarterly basis, but wording around the latest update shows they might be human after all.

Kubernetes 1.9 will be released on Dec. 15, which is just two-and-a-half months after 1.8 was unveiled.

As part of the Kubernetes 1.9 release notes, the community’s GitHub page cited the recent KubeCon event and upcoming holidays as a need for a “reduced scope in order to meet the tight schedule.” In other words, the fourth quarter Kubernetes update will be lighter on changes than previous updates.

Updates in the latest iteration include general availability of a workloads application programming interface (API) as part of broader support for stateless and stateful workloads; beta support for Windows; alpha implementation of the Container Storage Interface (CSI) standard for installing new volume plugins; and alpha support for IPv6. The “alpha” support means those items are not yet ready for production environments, while “beta” means they are ready for production environments and include legacy support.

The Microsoft Windows support follows on the heels of the computing giant altering its Azure Container Service acronym from ACS to AKS to emphasis its Kubernetes focus.

The rapid Kubernetes development pace is feeding a growing frenzy around the container orchestration platform. During last week’s KubeCon event, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which is part of the Linux Foundation and home to Kubernetes, announced 31 new members across various tiers.

CNCF also surveyed the community on its Kubernetes usage. The results showed 61 percent of organizations are evaluating and 83 percent are using Kubernetes in production.

A recent survey from RedMonk found 54 percent of Fortune 100 companies were running Kubernetes “in some form.” Containers in general were being used by 71 percent of those companies surveyed.

However, the RedMonk report noted it was still difficult to tell the exact depth of container and Kubernetes usage because much of the use is limited to the developer community.

“At this point it is not possible to definitively say how many of the Fortune 100 have Kubernetes in production,” wrote RedMonk analyst Fintan Ryan. “What is clear is that ‘The Docker Pattern is occurring in many large organizations with both Docker and Kubernetes playing their part.”

Highlighting the growing potential around Kubernetes, AT&T recently said its next-generation AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC) platform would have a greater reliance on Kubernetes for management and control. That platform is scheduled to begin rolling out next year.

Ryan van Wyk, assistant vice president of cloud platform development at AT&T, said the use of the open source Kubernetes project will add agility and remove cost from running the AIC platform.

Progress, however, does not come without challenges.

Reza Shafii, vice president of products at CoreOS, recently told SDxCentral that the company found a flaw in Kubernetes 1.7 that delayed integration into its Tectonic managed enterprise service product.

“There was a version of 1.7 that we planned to use but found a major issue and had to abort,” Shafii said. “The due diligence we put that version through added a lot of value to our customers, and we poured it back into the community.”

CoreOS just recently launched its Tectonic 1.8 platform that uses an unaltered version of Kubernetes 1.8.