The Cloud Foundry Foundation remains a big supporter of the container ecosystem, but a recent survey conducted by the organization found container adoption remains subdued.

The survey showed the percentage of respondents using containers at their company had increased from 22 percent in 2016, to 25 percent this year. Those evaluating use of containers increased from 31 percent to 42 percent.

However, when compared to a similar survey conducted by Evans Data earlier this year, the Cloud Foundry Foundation report indicated slower-than-expected adoption of containers over the past year.

“There has been no dramatic increase in broad deployment of containers by companies over the past year,” the report noted. “We see a significant increase in interest among Cloud Foundry Foundation survey participants (Evans does not), but actual adoption and deployment has seen either marginal growth or even a significant drop, based on Evans data.”

The survey then highlights differing growth estimates from vendors and analyst firms, stating: “One could argue the mixed results cast doubt on these predictions.”

Abby Kearns, executive director of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, said that while the results did indicate tepid adoption of containers, the pace is understandable.

“It has taken longer and has been harder than expected,” Kearns said.

She explained that while container technology was mature, organizations are still struggling to integrate the digital transformation mindset.

“The technology is the easy part,” Kearns said. “It’s building internal organizations to work together on deployment models that’s been the challenge. These all take time to get into place and we are just starting to see that growth.”

In fact, the survey and accompanying report predicts an “increased rate of uptake” moving forward.

“Perhaps not an explosion – nothing in enterprise moves as quickly as anyone predicts when it comes to the adoption of the latest and greatest technologies,” the report noted. “But as container technology becomes more mature, so do the means of overcoming the primary challenge of management and orchestration.”

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) recently unveiled initial members of its Kubernetes Certified Service Providers program, which is targeted at helping enterprises adopt containers. CNCF cited a Capgemini survey of 900 executives that found 70 percent of respondents claimed skill shortages as a challenge in their organization’s cloud-native plans.

In a recent survey conducted by SDxCentral, 55 percent of respondents that are not currently using container technology said a “lack of maturity” was the main reason for their reluctance. Twenty-seven percent noted a “lack of management and deployment tools” were holding them back, while 24 percent said they “don’t know how to scale containers yet.”

The Cloud Foundry Foundation is looking to ride the expected growth wave. The organization's open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) uses a container-based architecture that allows companies to deploy applications to multiple cloud platforms, both private and public, as well as on bare-metal servers, with no changes to the application.

“Cloud Foundry, in a nutshell, is just a highly automated abstraction on infrastructure,” Kearns explained to SDxCentral. “It adds a thin layer on top of your infrastructure to make it easier for you as a developer to get code out the door faster, and also to give you a consistent experience.”

The foundation recently welcomed Microsoft as a Gold Member, which followed the addition of Google late last year.

Kearns said having Google and Microsoft at the table “provides a lot of value.”

“They have been doing a lot of interaction with Cloud Foundry,” Kearns said. “For me, it’s a bonus to have them as part of this.”

Kearns said the foundation is focused on upcoming events where it plans to announce new initiatives, as well as expanding membership.

“We are focused on expanding the community and membership, and bringing in more services and capabilities around cloud,” Kearns said.