# Nine years of predicting cloud native, scored honestly " Giant Swarm

DevFeed: [Nine years of predicting cloud native, scored honestly " Giant Swarm](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/nine-years-of-predicting-cloud-native-scored-honestly-giant-swarm-17497.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.giantswarm.io/blog/nine-years-of-predicting-cloud-native-scored-honestly>)

Author: Oliver Thylmann

Published: 2026-06-29T10:07:32Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Giant Swarm Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/giant-swarm-blog.md>)

Topics: [Cloud Native Ecosystem](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-native-ecosystem.md>), [Platform Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/platform-engineering.md>), [Kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kubernetes.md>), [Open Source](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/open-source.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [cloud-native](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud-native.md>), [grafana](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/grafana.md>), [history](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/history.md>), [istio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/istio.md>), [kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kubernetes.md>), [microservices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/microservices.md>), [open-source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/open-source.md>), [platform-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform-engineering.md>), [tech](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tech.md>)

## AI overview

An author reflects on nine years of publishing and scoring annual cloud-native predictions. The article argues that making predictions specific and publicly scoring misses can expose the gap between expectations and reality. It traces a shift from Kubernetes-related technologies to platform engineering and, later, AI in operations.

## Source excerpt

I started writing annual predictions in 2017 to find out whether I could read the industry. Nine years in, that's turned out to be one of the least interesting things the exercise has done. What it does instead is harder to say, or harder to predict. Something like: it surfaces the gap between what I think will happen and what I want to be true. Nine years of scoring myself has been nine years of watching that gap.