In the rush to modernize application delivery, the industry is confronting a hard truth: Kubernetes adoption is outpacing the readiness of legacy infrastructure. While microservices and container orchestration offer speed and flexibility, they demand environments that are data-aware, scalable and purpose-built from day zero through day two and beyond.
Key challenges include the tension between speed and long-term maintainability, the shift toward generalist DevOps roles and the complexity of layering in observability and security. Organizations often find themselves trying to build modern pipelines on outdated platforms. The conversation around Kubernetes isn’t just about cloud-native tooling anymore — it’s about intelligent infrastructure that can handle scale, visibility and operational simplicity, according to Phil Trickovic (pictured), senior vice president of revenue at Tintri by DDN Inc.
TheCUBE’s Paul Nashawaty talks with Tintri’s Phil Trickovic about Kubernetes adoption.
“That’s what we’ve been focused on since day one and what we continue to focus on — and far more heavily now down into object awareness, being able to have greater mobility, ease of deployment, integration with other applications,” Trickovic said. “It’s amazing times, but they’re very confusing times. That’s what I’m seeing on my travels around the world.”
Trickovic spoke with theCUBE’s Paul Nashawaty in a lead up to an encore presentation theCUBE Research’s AppDev Done Right Summit, an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how the rapid pace of Kubernetes adoption is exposing critical gaps in legacy infrastructure, highlighting the need for intelligent, scalable platforms that support visibility, security and operational efficiency across the full application lifecycle. (* Disclosure below.)
Closing the visibility gap in Kubernetes adoption
Organizations are learning the hard way that legacy architectures can’t keep up with the object-level complexity of Kubernetes. Speed and ROI are impossible to sustain without infrastructure built for today’s app environments, according to Trickovic. Tintri was designed from the ground up to provide real-time object awareness — critical when deploying millions of ephemeral or persistent resources.
“What’s throttling the whole thing is it’s trying to be done on things that were designed for different purposes,” Trickovic said. “Any of the legacy type server architecture, storage architectures, even network architectures have to change to realize the potential of what we can deliver with these tools.”
Tintri tracks and manages containers with the same visibility it brings to virtual machines. That means developers don’t have to re-architect their observability stack or sacrifice operational clarity. This is especially relevant for organizations trying to deploy production-ready apps in under a day — or those struggling to scale beyond a few internal users. Trickovic cited several examples of clients who failed to go live with other platforms but were running successfully on Tintri within 24 hours.
“We were designed from that from day one, back in 2008,” he explained. “It’s starting to become realized now that it actually is.”
The conversation also touched on the security gaps still plaguing many Kubernetes environments. Without unified tooling and audit-ready infrastructure, organizations face serious exposure — not just from attackers, but from an inability to track data lineage and object interaction across systems, Trickovic warned. Tintri’s value lies in providing that full-stack intelligence, he added.
“We’ll know where it went, who touched it, full audit logs, real-time, etc.,” Trickovic said. “It’s very difficult to do that when you’ve got disaggregated disparate systems that all touch these at some point.”
To close the loop, Trickovic urged organizations to pause and assess whether their current practices are scalable and secure. Are companies doing things in a modern way that’s efficient, he asked, noting that the difference between success for four users versus 4,000 can be infrastructure-deep.
“What I have seen a lot of is people make an absolutely amazing application … works great for four people, doesn’t work at all for 4,000,” he said. “I’m asking the audience not to slow down but kind of pause for a second, look at are you doing things the most efficient because they’re really going to matter when you launch it to the point of detriment.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE Research’s AppDev Done Right Summit:
(* Disclosure: Tintri by DDN Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Tintri nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)
Photo: News
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