GigaOm Radar for Hosted Kubernetes Solutionsv1.0

1. Summary

Enterprises have been developing microservices-based applications for a while, and many of them are in a transition phase, moving from the development and testing of their first applications to production. At the same time, from an infrastructure point of view, we are quickly advancing from initial curiosity around Kubernetes, to first proof of concepts and training laboratories, to early production environments. In this context, there’s an increasing interest in solutions such as Hosted Kubernetes services that can bridge the gap between user expectations and the reality of Kubernetes.

In fact, Kubernetes remains a very complex and immature platform that continues to receive frequent updates and new functionalities. For IT organizations accustomed to the ease of use and maturity of technologies like virtualization, this is a destabilizing factor. In most cases, the only way to operate safely is to be up to date with the latest upstream version of Kubernetes and its satellite projects, and to be sure to get everything supported and fully functioning with the latest security patches, application program interfaces (APIs), and performance improvements. But the fact is, most organizations are not ready to operate at this pace. Managing an ever-evolving platform like Kubernetes is a demanding task, and on top of this, there are operational complexities in this type of platform that can create reliability issues if not addressed correctly.

IT organizations favor containers because they enable true application portability, and Kubernetes is the platform to manage container-based applications correctly, at scale. With portability comes the possibility of planning and realizing hybrid cloud strategies that enable organizations to move applications across different on-premises and cloud environments.

The easiest way to get all the advantages of Kubernetes and none of the complexity that comes with it is to choose the right hosted Kubernetes services. There are plenty of options in the market at the moment and, although rooted in the same code base, they present several differences in technical features, consumption models, and support aspects.

Fortunately, Kubernetes didn’t see the proliferation of different distributions or many competing projects as occurred early on with the Linux OS. The core of Kubernetes is the same on all platforms, and they share the same commands, structure, and way of operating, making seamless application portability a reality.