CNCF Honors Dapr with Top-Level Project Status
Dapr, the open-source runtime originally incubated by Microsoft, has officially graduated to top-level status within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
Dapr, the open-source runtime originally incubated by Microsoft, has officially graduated to top-level status within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). With this achievement, Dapr joins the ranks of CNCF’s premier projects, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Istio.
A resource for developers aiming to create secure, resilient distributed applications
Since its inception, Dapr has been a resource for developers aiming to create secure, resilient distributed applications. This recent elevation is a testament to Dapr’s stability, comprehensive documentation, active maintainer base, and strong traction in the market.
An API to simplify common challenges in building microservice architectures
Short for Distributed Application Runtime, Dapr was launched in 2019 with a vision to streamline distributed computing. Its APIs simplify common challenges in building microservice architectures, enabling developers to focus more on business logic than infrastructure complexity. Despite its Microsoft roots, Dapr has consistently maintained a vendor-neutral approach, making it accessible across platforms and versatile in its integration with other cloud-native tools like OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and gRPC. Since entering the CNCF incubator in 2021, Dapr has drawn support from over 3,700 contributors across 400 organizations and has been widely adopted by major companies, including Grafana, HDFC Bank, and Vonage.
Coding workflows to orchestrate RAG pipelines
Diagrid, a key player in the Dapr community alongside Microsoft, Intel, and Alibaba, recently announced at KubeCon that the next release, Dapr 1.15, will introduce new features designed to simplify AI integration. Notably, the 1.15 release will include the new Conversational API, which enables developers to embed large language models (LLMs) into applications more effectively. This API reduces the complexity of interacting with LLMs and ensures critical functions, such as prompt caching and PII data obfuscation, essential for secure AI applications. "Developers are increasingly being tasked with customizing LLMs," said Mark Fussell, Diagrid CEO and Dapr co-creator. "With Dapr, they can code workflows to orchestrate retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, making it easy to query LLMs while maintaining flexibility to adapt as AI technology evolves." This level of flexibility allows enterprises to swap out one LLM for another with minimal impact on application architecture, offering a future-proof solution for integrating AI.
In addition to the Conversational API, the Workflow API has been upgraded to production-ready status in Dapr 1.15. This API allows developers to reliably orchestrate microservices and build stateful, long-running applications that can handle complex business processes. Dapr’s flexible, component-based approach empowers developers to build on proven cloud-native patterns without needing to reinvent common functions like state and secret management. Dapr’s Service Invocation API, for instance, simplifies service-to-service communication through a sidecar model that reduces code overhead, allowing different services to interact without direct coupling.
Dapr: mature, robust, and ready for enterprise-scale deployments
Dapr’s graduation from CNCF’s incubation phase demonstrates its maturity, robustness, and readiness for enterprise-scale deployments. Reflecting on the milestone, Dapr maintainer Yaron Schneider, also CTO and co-founder of Diagrid, noted that Dapr’s CNCF community engagement has been a catalyst for its growth. “Dapr’s mission is to meet emerging developer needs and solve the challenges of distributed computing,” Schneider said. Loong Dai, a core maintainer and Intel cloud engineer, added, “In an era where traffic is king, Dapr has redefined distributed application development, enabling developers to focus on core business needs while streamlining development.”
Dapr, a leader in cloud-native development tools
The CNCF endorsement highlights Dapr’s commitment to strong security, effective governance, and comprehensive support resources. With more than 70 million SDK downloads, tens of thousands of users, and a robust roadmap for future enhancements, Dapr is increasingly recognized as a leader in cloud-native development tools. In fact, Dapr was recently named a finalist in the InfoWorld Technology of the Year awards in the "Software Development: Tools" category. CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk described Dapr as “a comprehensive solution for building edge and cloud-native applications, helping developers innovate faster.”
This week in Salt Lake City, UT: KubeCon + Cloud Native Con
KubeCon attendees had the opportunity to explore Dapr’s latest advancements, with talks from Yaron Schneider and FICO’s senior architect Hugo Smitter, who presented on how Dapr enhances deployment flexibility and scalability. With Dapr 1.15 slated for release in mid-December, the Dapr community is committed to evolving the runtime to meet the demands of modern software development and enable developers to build robust, AI-enhanced applications.
In conclusion
Diagrid, a leading contributor to Dapr’s evolution, continues to advance open-source tools tailored to cloud-native and microservices architectures, helping developers focus on what matters most: delivering business value. Through Dapr, Diagrid’s mission to empower developers with secure, reliable, and scalable applications is well underway, supporting a new era of productivity and innovation.