Just the other day, Java just celebrated its 25th birthday, and from the time of its birth it was called “write once, run everywhere”, but more than 20 years later, there is still a deep gap between programming and actual production delivery. the world of IT is never short of concepts, and if a concept doesn’t solve the problem, then it’s time for another layer of concepts. it’s been 6 years since Kubernetes was born, and it’s time for the post-Kubernetes era - the era of cloud-native applications!

This white paper will take you on a journey to explore the development path of cloud-native applications in the post-Kubernetes era.

Highlights of the ideas conveyed include.

• Cloud-native has passed through a savage growth period and is moving towards uniform application of standards.
• Kubernetes’ native language does not fully describe the cloud-native application architecture, and the development and operation functions are heavily coupled in the configuration of resources.
• Operator’s expansion of the Kubernetes ecosystem has led to the fragmentation of cloud-native applications, and there is an urgent need for a unified application definition standard.
• The essence of OAM is to separate the R&D and O&M concerns in the definition of cloud-native applications, and to further abstract resource objects, simplify and encompass everything.
• “Kubernetes Next Generation” refers to the fact that after Kubernetes became the infrastructure layer standard, the focus of the cloud-native ecology is being overtaken by the application layer, and the last two years have been a powerful exploration of the hot Service Mesh process, and the era of cloud-native application architecture based on Kubernetes is coming.

Kubernetes has become an established operating platform for cloud-native applications, and this white paper will expand with Kubernetes as the default platform, including an explanation of the OAM-based hierarchical model for cloud-native applications.