10 Years of Cloud-Native Evolution and the Emergence of AI

Ten years ago, we started the Cloud Native Night Meetup in Munich and Mainz with a simple idea: to explore, discuss, and better understand emerging technologies together with the community.

Our 10th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on the journey from containers and Kubernetes to platform engineering, cloud-native architectures, and now AI-native applications - and to discuss what the next decade of software engineering might look like.
We'll have a varied program for you. From a panel discussion about the Cloud Native journey and beyond to a talk about AI developer experience.

We are excited to celebrate this achievement with you by holding a hybrid event in Mainz and Munich simultaneously.

THIS MEETUP will be in ENGLISH and HYBRID. | Zoom Link is visible for remote attendees after registration.

*** AGENDA ***

• 6:30-6:50 PM | Doors open. Grab some snacks & drinks.
• 6:50 PM | Welcome & Intro Start of the hybrid meetup
• 7:00 PM | Panel Discussion: Beyond Cloud-Native: Rethinking Infrastructure and Platforms for the AI Era / Munich
• Break around 7:35-7:50 pm
• 7:50 PM | Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI Agents, MCP, and Next-Gen Gateways - Mario-Leander Reimer / Munich
• 8:25 PM | Ambiguity Tolerance – How Agency and Sovereignty Demands a New State of Acceptance - Max Körbächer / Munich
• afterwards: More snacks & drinks, and a lot of time for networking with all attendees and speakers.

*** ABSTRACTS ***
Panel Discussion: Beyond Cloud-Native: Rethinking Infrastructure and Platforms for the AI Era / Munich
To mark the 10th anniversary of Cloud Native Night, we’re not planning a talk, but a conversation: an honest look back with a few people who have experienced and shaped the community and the cloud-native world over the years. The common thread is the journey — from the early days (when Docker was new, Kubernetes had only just emerged, and ‘cloud-native’ was barely a term) to the present day, where platform engineering, developer experience and now also AI and agent-based approaches are shaping the discussion. And, of course, a look ahead: what lies in store for the next ten years? The aim is a discussion that is entertaining, personal and perhaps even self-critical.

Participants:
- Mario-Leander Reimer (CTO, QAware)
- Nico Meisenzahl (COO, white duck)
- Max Körbächer (CEO, Liquid Reply)
- Matthias Haeussler (Vice President Consulting Expert, CGI)

Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI Agents, MCP, and Next-Gen Gateways - Mario-Leander Reimer, (CTO, QAware)
'Don't panic!' — this advice from Douglas Adams is more relevant today than ever before. While the world of APIs has traditionally been strictly deterministic, we are now entering a probabilistic, context-hungry and agent-driven galaxy. The classic API Gateway, or 'Traffic Cop', is simply overwhelmed by this new communication paradigm.

In this session, we will take you on a journey through the world of AI gateways. We will explain why the era of generative AI requires more than standard infrastructure components, demanding radically new protocols and cross-cutting concerns. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) manages universal data access; standards such as A2A enable autonomous collaboration between agents; and A2UI ensures that user interfaces can be generated dynamically.

But how can you orchestrate this "zoo" of protocols securely? This is where the AI Gateway comes in. Through compelling live demonstrations, we will show you how modern gateways can eliminate latency via semantic caching, reduce costs through token rate limiting, and protect sensitive corporate data via PII redaction. We will present architectures that instantly make legacy APIs 'agent-ready' without changing a single line of backend code.

Join us on this journey and prepare your APIs for the AI revolution. And don't forget your towel!

Ambiguity Tolerance – How Agency and Sovereignty Demands a New State of Acceptance - Max Körbächer (CEO, Liquid Reply)
Abstract TBD

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