Explore TAG Workloads Foundation: Advancing Cloud Native Execution From Core Runtime To Applications
Stephen Rust, Principal Architect, Akamai Cloud
Yuan Tang, Senior Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat
Marlow Warnicke, Senior Engineer, Nvidia
Kante Yin, R&D Engineer, HivergeAI
#KubeCon #CloudNativeCon
Agenda
What is a TAG?
What is a TAG?
Support Projects
Define and Advance Practices, Standards, Assessments
Scale contributions by the technical community
Retaining integrity increasing quality
In support of the CNCF’s mission
“... within each technical domain of cloud native systems, applications, and architectures for the benefit of the community and our project adopters. This supports the CNCF’s technical vision by addressing critical problems faced by adopters and contributing to a robust cloud native ecosystem.”
https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/governance/tag-governance.md#technical-advisory-groups-tags
Title
TAG Goals
Title
Strengthen the project ecosystem
Bridge between projects
Identify gaps in the CNCF Project Portfolio
Scale / Offload the TOC
Provide Technical Expertise
Educate and inform users
Help foster project maturity
CNCF Project Landscape
Title
TAG Developer Experience
Microservices, Streaming, Messaging, API Management, Dev Frameworks
TAG Workloads Foundation
Containers, OS, Runtime, Virtual Machines, Serverless, Web Assembly, Databases, Batch, Serving, Scheduler, Orchestrator, Deployment, Dynamic Scaling, CI/CD
TAG Infrastructure
Data, Storage, Network, DNS, Compute, Service Mesh, Infrastructure-as-Code, Edge, Sovereignty, Load Balancing
TAG Operational Resilience
TAG Security and Compliance
TAG Responsibilities
Title
| | | | | |
Reach out to projects, engage with communities | Often the first point of contact for a project with the CNCF | Provide “Domain Technical Review” | Sponsor TAG initiatives such as whitepapers | Sponsor TAG-led Community Subprojects | Hold regular public meetings / everything in the open |
Domain Technical Reviews
What is a DTR?
| General Technical Questions
|
Restructuring of TAGs
TAG Reboot
Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs)
TAG Developer Experience
TAG Workloads Foundation
TAG Infrastructure
TAG Operational Resilience
TAG Security and Compliance
Subprojects
Project Reviews Subproject
Contributor Strategy Subproject
Technical Oversight Committee (TOC)
TAG Reboot References
TAG Reboot TOC GitHub Issue
TAG Reboot Presentation Slides
What is TAG�Workloads Foundation?
Mission
To define and advance practices and standards for fundamental cloud native workload execution environments and their related lifecycle management within cloud native systems, applications, and architectures.
Scope
Out of Scope
Leadership
Chairs
Tech Leads
Community Activities
Subprojects
Propose a Subproject
Batch Systems Subproject
Batch Systems Subproject
"To define and advance practices and standards for fundamental cloud native workload execution environments and their related lifecycle management within cloud native systems, applications, and architectures."
Landscape:
Batch Systems Subproject
Meetings biweekly Tuesdays at 8AM PST, next meeting December 2nd.
Meetings are usually informative and have a variety of topics. Examples include:
Current Initiatives:
Initiatives
Initiative: Cloud Native AI Scheduling Challenges Whitepaper
“This paper aims to enumerate and educate the various challenges and opportunities regarding optimizing resource allocation (aka scheduling) for Cloud Native Artificial Intelligence (CNAI) workloads. Cloud Native allows easy scaling of resources, making it ideal for AI workloads of two types: training and inference.”
Initiative: Cloud-Native Foundations for Distributed Agentic Systems
“Formalise principles, reference patterns and ecosystem strategy for running massively distributed systems of collaborating AI agents on Kubernetes and other cloud-native substrates.”
Other Initiatives
Roughly 30 other initiatives are currently underway
Example Initiatives:
Propose an Initiative
Community Groups
Projects
Graduated Projects
Graduation
Maturity and Sustainability
Thriving Adoption
Healthy Governance Structure
Strong Diverse Community
High Standards for Security and Compliance
“This includes adopting the CNCF Code of Conduct, maintaining the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) Best Practices Badge, completing security reviews, and proving a stable committer process with multi-organization backing.”
https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/template-graduation-application.md
Continuous Integration and Delivery
2022-12-06
2022-11-30
Database
2020-09-02
2019-11-05
Scheduling and Orchestration
2018-03-06
2023-08-22
2025-09-11
2025-10-28
Container Registry
2025-10-28
2020-06-15
Container Runtime
2019-02-28
2023-07-19
Incubating Projects
Incubation
Significant Production Adoption
Publicly documented list of adopters
Strong Vendor-Neutral Governance
Clear Maintainer Lifecycle
“Projects also need to demonstrate sustainability, a healthy contribution flow, and adopt the CNCF Code of Conduct.“
https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/template-incubation-application.md
Scheduling and Orchestration
OS / Container Runtime / Virtual Machines
2025-10-14
2024-08-02
2022-04-19
Serving
2025-09-29
WebAssembly
2024-11-08
Sandbox Projects
Sandbox
Initial Project Stage
Innovative and Experimental Ideas
Continuous Stage of Evolution
Experimental
https://github.com/cncf/sandbox
Orchestration, Serverless, CI/CD Examples
llm-d�2026-03-12
KAI Scheduler�2025-12-21
KubeElasti�2026-01-03
OpenChoreo�2026-01-06
Getting Involved
How to get involved?