The above is from a recent IDC white paper.
Container use is growing. Even then, VMs still run everything. Most of those containers run in VMs:
IDC forecasts that 85% of containers will run in VMs in 2028. Meanwhile, there is a huge installed base of traditional applications in VMs that will be around for a very long time.
And:
nearly all public clouds continue to run their containers in VMs for reasons of multitenant isolation, scalability, and utilization maximization. This architectural choice reinforces that VMs remain essential for secure and efficient container operations at scale.
One way to think about it is that containers are used for application architecture and VMs are used to run those app architectures.
Check out the PDF, it’s a direct link, no lead-gen.
Also, the VM-to-containers share is one proxy for answering “how many apps run on Kubernetes”?