Inside CNCF: How Alibaba’s Zhang Lei Shapes the Future of Cloud Native

Since 2017 Alibaba has poured substantial resources into cloud‑native technologies, actively contributing to top‑level open‑source projects such as etcd, Kubernetes, and Containerd, and using a cloud‑native stack to upgrade its own infrastructure.

On February 2, 2021 the Cloud Native Computing Foundation announced the results of its Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) election, and Alibaba Cloud senior expert Zhang Lei was elected as the sole representative from a Chinese company among the eleven TOC members.

Zhang Lei is a co‑maintainer of the Kubernetes project and co‑chair of the CNCF App Delivery SIG. He helped design core Kubernetes features such as the Container Runtime Interface (CRI), equivalence‑class scheduling, and topology‑aware resource management. Recognized for his impact, he became a CNCF ambassador in 2016, a recurring KubeCon reviewer and keynote speaker, and in 2019 the first Chinese co‑chair of the App Delivery group.

Alibaba’s open‑source contributions include Dubbo, RocketMQ, Spring Cloud Alibaba, Dragonfly, OpenYurt, OpenKruise, the Open Application Model (OAM) co‑created with Microsoft, KubeVela, Fluid, and Serverless Devs, many of which have entered the CNCF Landscape or graduated to top‑level projects.

Q: Congratulations on becoming one of the eleven CNCF TOC members. Could you introduce yourself? Zhang Lei explained that he now leads cloud‑native application platform infrastructure at Alibaba Cloud, works on OAM/KubeVela, OpenKruise and OpenYurt, and previously contributed upstream to Kubernetes, including CRI and scheduler components, while also participating in the KataContainers project.

Q: How do you view the development and evolution of Cloud Native? He noted that cloud‑native has become the mainstream way to deliver applications, combining standard application models and mesh‑based progressive delivery, and that the term represents a set of best practices that continuously evolve to reduce cost and increase efficiency for users.

Q: What major changes did you observe in the cloud‑native field last year? He highlighted the rapid adoption of cloud‑native across domains, citing Alibaba Cloud projects such as OpenYurt (edge), OpenKruise (workload management), Virtual Cluster (Serverless), and the ongoing incubation of OAM/KubeVela, all of which drive the ecosystem forward.

Q: Where do you see Cloud Native heading in the future? Zhang Lei predicts a shift toward “ability sinking and value rising,” with technologies like Service Mesh, GitOps, OAM, and Dapr moving closer to end‑user experience, and cloud‑native principles extending into databases, AI, and edge computing.

Q: What areas will you focus on as a TOC member? He plans to concentrate on application management and delivery, cloud‑native programming models, developer experience, and emerging low‑level technologies such as WebAssembly and eBPF, anticipating that future CNCF flagship projects may go beyond Kubernetes.

Q: Any advice for advancing the cloud‑native ecosystem in China? Zhang Lei emphasized that China’s cloud‑native community is now the most vibrant globally, urging bold innovation, international collaboration, and the use of neutral organizations like CNCF to amplify Chinese contributions on the world stage.

Key Insight: The enduring vitality of cloud‑native—its continuous self‑evolution and community‑driven innovation—is what makes it so attractive to the broader cloud computing ecosystem.