Kubernetes is the starting point, not a destination

Containers have emerged as the principal way that DevOps teams package and run applications. Why is it so popular? Containers allow developers to package code in a standard way. From there, operations teams can deploy software efficiently, and scale rapidly.

Despite being only four years old, Kubernetes, an open-source project that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containers, has become ubiquitous. It’s the most popular way of orchestrating container environments.

In fact, research leading into 2019 showed that with both Google and Azure, more than half of all container environments are handled by Kubernetes. Even with AWS, where the take-up has been slower, Kubernetes now accounts for 35 per cent of all container environments, with containers expected to become a $US2.7 billion market by 2020, and Kubernetes being the clear leader in the space. It’s clear that DevOps, IT teams, and organisations understand how to grapple with it.

Although Kubernetes meets a clear demand – hence the growth behind it – it also remains a challenging prospect for many organisations. It is renowned for being sophisticated, difficult technology, and understanding the vast landscape of Kubernetes, as well as the management of the platform once deployed, can be extremely difficult for DevOps teams.

TheNewStack recently published an article Has Kubernetes Already Become Too Unnecessarily Complex for Enterprise IT, which says: “As software engineers take the time — or struggle to find it — to digest yet another heaping truckload of new ideas, information, and maybe inspiration from the latest KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in Copenhagen, a sober, respectful, and revealing new dialogue is emerging about the state of Kubernetes and its ecosystem.”

To help enterprises capitalize on the power of Kubernetes, Pivotal launched Pivotal Container Service (PKS), an enterprise Kubernetes product, architected for rapid results, scaling and reliability on any infrastructure. More recently, Pivotal announced several new products to help companies get even more from Kubernetes. This portfolio of new offerings is designed to make Kubernetes more accessible to developer teams. Newly announced services include:

• Build Service – Provides automation for developers to easily create container images, while providing enterprises the audit and security controls necessary to run with confidence at scale.
• RabbitMQ – Automates deployment and ongoing operations of RabbitMQ, the most popular messaging queue. It features a self-service and configurability experience available for developers.
• Service Mesh – This service automates the setup and configuration of Istio, allowing developers to get apps into production quickly and securely.
• Spring Runtime – Offers comprehensive support for Java environments including OpenJDK, Spring Support, and Apache Tomcat.

The solution is providing immediate relief for organisations that are struggling with Kubernetes.

“Kubernetes is a runaway train right now, and organisations are struggling to keep deployments and management on track. They want to standardise processes, tools, and people, but face a fragmented, complex, and rapidly changing environment,” James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk, an analyst firm that specialises in helping organisations with their development environment, said. “Pivotal has a history of standardising and documenting Cloud-native tools and methods, and is now applying that experience to Kubernetes and associated technology—such as Istio. It is finessing the industry shift to Kubernetes by taking management features from the Pivotal Application Service, and re-applying them.”

As Pivotal staff software engineer, Eric Malm, wrote on the company blog: “PAS on Kubernetes aims to bring the development experience of PAS on top of Kubernetes. The alpha release is a proof-of-concept that supports the most important features of PAS, such as `cf push` for many buildpack-based apps, while running PAS app instances on Kubernetes.

“One thing hasn’t changed: we remain laser-focused on supporting your apps in production, on whatever cloud you choose.”

Making Kubernetes accessible and simple is helping organisations take advantage of the biggest new innovation in the DevOps world.

To find out more about Pivotal Application Service (PAS), click here.