Apple has joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a group of companies working to improve cloud services across the industry, with the maker of iCloud signing up as a Platinum End User Member of the organization.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is a community of companies and other organizations that work together on a variety of open source technologies and other projects, specifically to help cloud servers and refine architectures that are in use. CNCF aims to make cloud native computing "universal and sustainable," with an open source software stack used to deploy applications in separate "containers," to optimize available resources.
Apple's entry as a Platinum End User Member is due to its extensive usage of cloud technologies, with the group noting how Apple has "long been a pioneer" in the field and one of the earlier adopters of container technology. Apple has also contributed to a number of CNCF projects, including Kubernetes, gRPC, Prometheus, Envoy Proxy, and Vitess, as well as hosting the FoundationDB Summit at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in 2018.
"Having a company with the experience and scale of Apple as an end user member is a huge testament to the vitality of cloud native computing for the future of infrastructure and application development," said CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk. "We're thrilled to have the support of Apple and look forward to the future contributions to the broader cloud native project community."
As part of its Platinum End User status, Apple Senior Engineering Manager Tom Doron is joining CNCF's Governing Board, giving the iPhone maker a say in how projects are operated and developed further. By having a voice at the board, Apple could potentially contribute further to projects, as well as help steer existing work to be more beneficial to its cloud computing needs.
The Platinum Member status is higher than Silver and Gold membership, which each offers inclusion of the company logo on the website and marketing, access to The Linux Foundation's Open Source Leadership Summit, discounts for convention sponsorships, increased access to CNCF staff, and increased status of votes in elections to appoint representatives. Membership at the Platinum level costs $370,000 annually for non-members of the Linux Foundation, $350,000 for members.
There are 87 other firms that are classed as "end user companies," with the list ranging from Spotify and Salesforce to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, to Reddit and Adidas.