Kubernetes on the road to the Cloud

The platform for managing data containers, developing cloud-native applications, and modernizing legacy workloads is solidifying. To draw a parallel with the Star Trek spaceship from the legendary science fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry, Kubernetes and its open-source properties unite 'competing races' in a near-universal goal […]

November 10, 2021, 14 min read. By: Skyone

The unusual name initially caught attention: Kubernetes. Although still relatively new, its seven-year history already establishes a significant presence in the market when it comes to data orchestration that automates, scales, and generates containerized applications. Born and raised within Google, its history is reminiscent of the Star Trek series (see below for "The Beginning of Everything"), but it soon came under the tutelage of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an organization that brings together IT giants.

In other words, Kubernetes has become a standard, especially in Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) architectures, and, as we will see, it brings together a good number of vendors with heterogeneous backgrounds. But what matters is how it works, how the market is moving in its direction, and how channels can profit from it.

It has become increasingly common to consume Kubernetes as a service, offered by a cloud provider

Its reach – being an open-source service, its dissemination is facilitated – is already interesting, but there is still much room for growth, especially with the migration to cloud infrastructure undertaken by many companies as a result of the pandemic.

Due to the need for remote work, hybrid work, and the high demand for e-commerce and other virtual services, some Brazilian companies are taking advantage of the redesign of their cloud environments to use Kubernetes, defined as the ideal way to optimize, automate, and scale their operations through this container orchestration format. This more agile model begins with container technology, which is a way of packaging an application and all its dependencies. Kubernetes was created to ensure fast and reliable execution across various environments – from laptops and traditional data centers to clouds and edge environments.

“The goal of Kubernetes is to automate many manual IT processes related to the deployment, management, and scaling of enterprise workloads based on these repositories, as a way to better orchestrate Containers,” explains Thiago Araki, Technology Director for Latin America at Red Hat. Currently, the company is the second largest contributor to this project, and its collaboration led to the creation of OpenShift, an enterprise Container platform.

Kubernetes has become a standard, especially in PaaS and IaaS architectures

According to the company, OpenShift is used by more than three thousand organizations worldwide, including 90% of Fortune 500 companies and numerous companies in Brazil. According to a study by the research firm Omdia earlier this year, Red Hat commands 47.8% of the market for this technology.

Other key players
Even Microsoft has joined in and has a strategic vision. “The use of Kubernetes goes far beyond data management. Thus, new applications and updates can be implemented without the need to search for periods of lower peak in the company's operation. Kubernetes itself, in case of failures, automatically undoes the entire process so as not to interrupt services to internal (employees) or external (end consumers) clients,” explains Rodolpho Ugolini, Marketing Manager of the Azure platform, which offers Azure Kubernetes Service, or AKS, to its clients.

Among the clients, noteworthy examples include Riachuelo in the construction of Rchlo+ – a space for customers to personalize their clothing; Indikatore, which offers intelligent Supply Chain solutions for Retail; and Omnilogic.

Google, the "father of the child," runs all its platforms, such as the Google Cloud division, on the premise of Containers using Kubernetes. "This helps our development teams evolve rapidly, deploy software efficiently, and operate at an unprecedented scale," the press office responded to our request for an interview on the subject.

Google Kubernetes Engine, for example, is considered a fundamental component of the PIX solution developed by the startup Bit Capital. In its solution environment, it has 20 clusters with over 1,500 pods and 250 GB of monthly data. A robust structure to support a service that involves periods of intense demand, such as Black Friday.

Another case highlighted by the company is that of Natura, which used the Google Kubernetes Engine platform to test assets in virtual environments using algorithms customized by the company itself. In this model, a virtual molecule – from a substance, a real asset – was created in an environment where the interactions it may undergo are simulated, such as temperature variations or contact and absorption with water.

There is a lot of room for growth, especially with the migration to cloud infrastructure

In short, companies of any size and profile can make use of Kubernetes. Although, initially, most companies installed it in their data centers, as it became increasingly common to consume Kubernetes as a service offered by a cloud provider, it became accessible to everyone; allowing companies with less computing capacity or internal resources to operate this type of technology to also benefit from container technology.

Cloud, the initial frontier.
It's easy to find startups and cloud-native companies that are already directly embracing the use of Kubernetes. One example is Sky.One Solutions. “All new products are designed for implementation in containers and Kubernetes. One of our main use cases is our multi-cloud system, which is managed by Kubernetes, allowing us to run the same application on more than one cloud quickly and easily,” points out Rennan Sanchez, co-founder and CTO of Sky.One Solutions.

Almost all technology companies are engaging with Kubernetes in one way or another. Developers, for example, use it in their daily work, as it becomes simpler and less prone to errors. For integrators and service providers, Kubernetes has become the most complete solution currently available on the market for container orchestration.

Because it is an Open Source solution, it has an ecosystem of professionals and companies that aim to use and improve it as a way to support innovation in the market, and thus Kubernetes continues to advance to other frontiers.

Microsoft, for example, has an ecosystem of 25,000 partners in Brazil alone. “Each partner has services and solutions that are within their area of expertise, and a highly qualified team that not only handles sales, but also provides a complete understanding of the business and its infrastructure needs, designs solutions with the teams, manages the implementation process, trains clients, and supports the technologies,” enthuses Danni Mnitentag, Vice President of Partners and Channels at Microsoft Brazil. The partners help bring the AKS concept to market.

Containers will be the standard choice for 75% of new enterprise applications in 2024

As a profile, the Microsoft Channel has a strong component of investment in the qualification and technical capacity of its professionals, acting from the moment of sale of solutions to the implementation, maintenance and management of workloads and services coupled to Azure. In total, more than three million training sessions have been conducted and more than 96,000 certifications have been delivered within the partner program, the Microsoft Partner Network.

Exploring possibilities
: As a direct competitor, Red Hat has over a thousand Channel partners who can sell and implement its solutions. In technologies like OpenShift, partners have been trained and understand how to identify the need to implement the solution for current and future clients. “Everyone has been trained with courses and workshops on the entire model we have within the Channel area, and they know how to prepare an architecture to incorporate the Kubernetes and Containers component, offering this possibility and adding value to clients,” explains Sandra Vaz, Senior Director of Alliances and Channels for Latin America at Red Hat.

The company, like the market in general, has several channel profiles in its ecosystem. It classifies them into Premier, Advanced, and Ready categories. To reach each of these categories, partners undergo a series of training sessions with specialists. In addition, there is a team managed by company executives, called Partner Alliance Managers, who support clients in building a business plan, aligning the expectations of the partner and Red Hat.

This investment includes a schedule of digital and in-person training sessions, designed to closely monitor the certification and progress of each partner. They undergo training so they can sell not only subscriptions but also services. "The idea is to prepare the Channels team to have a consultative sales profile, understand the client's business needs, their cloud infrastructure, and also be familiar with all the technological trends to support their evolution to multicloud," adds Sandra.

♦ Distributors Going Further
This journey also involves distributors, especially those that work closely with integration partners. They want to carve out their space in this Kubernetes landscape. “Even with widespread adoption, it’s still a technology that companies are getting to know and accelerating in their projects and usage. This is especially true for those coming from a legacy environment, with applications running on the traditional model,” notes Álvaro Rezende, Latam Platform & Services Owner at TD Synnex for Latin America and the Caribbean, which markets Azure, Amazon, and IBM platforms, among others.

As a strategy, the executive explains that the distributor's engineers and architects have the knowledge to identify and offer the benefits of Kubernetes to clients and partners when they encounter a business opportunity. "The driving force behind projects today is the modernization of applications and the relocation of systems to the cloud. Moving legacy applications is a very common challenge," he admits.

In less than three years, this market is expected to jump from US$465.8 million to US$944 million

And he emphasizes the role of Channels in the process. “Partners are the key to a successful end-customer experience in using technology. The customer expects support and assistance from the partner in their digital transformation journey, especially with so many technology issues happening simultaneously,” he assures. In short, the Channel should act as a consultant to the customer and deliver a modern offering with high availability and excellent cost-benefit.

To assist its Channels, TD Synnex constantly holds webinars to share knowledge with its partners. It also offers various training courses on K.NOW! – the distributor's official learning platform – free of charge.

The distributor Pars has been emphasizing market education to its business partners, demonstrating the benefits of the technology through training and workshops. It maintains a focus on demonstrating the solutions and their benefits, and then, in a second phase, shifts to a more technical approach so that companies understand how the tool works and what infrastructure is needed to support it.

“We have case studies in the financial sector, the most recent one involving PIX. The technology of one of our partners has the capacity to support 2,500 PIX transactions every four seconds. Many people think that PIX is only for sending and receiving money, but there is a whole range of solutions capable of supporting the volume of these transactions,” argues Raphael Militino, Solutions Architect at Pars.

The role of Pars' Channels is to bring the latest market innovations to their end customers, with the distributor acting as a support arm in this process, both in sales and in training the Channel itself. Partners who lack marketing or pre-sales infrastructure receive support to help them capture and deliver the best project for the end customer. "Our Channel needs to have a basic understanding of the platform and participate in training offered by suppliers," he recalls.

The future, the final frontier.
With rapid advancements resulting from increased maturity and the involvement of many companies in Kubernetes development, almost any type of workload is now suitable for it, including traditional applications, databases, and even Big Data and Machine Learning.

On the other hand, some types of systems – large monolithic applications like ERPs and CRMs – while they can run on Kubernetes, typically don't reap as many benefits, as they are systems that don't scale well on demand and often don't even need to be portable between environments.

But what can we expect for 2022 and beyond? “Every day new tools emerge that help in the administration of Kubernetes clusters, so we can expect next year or in 2023 an improvement in the native Kubernetes dashboard and an increasingly massive investment from cloud providers to provide an ever-better service,” projects Sanchez, from Sky.One Solutions.

However, making predictions in the world of technology can be difficult, especially in the medium term. “It’s plausible to predict that the adoption of Containers and Kubernetes will only increase. The main driver is the digital transformation initiatives in companies, which are placing application development at the center of their IT and business strategy,” points out Araki, from Red Hat.

Regarding projections, according to Gartner, containers will become the standard choice for 75% of new enterprise applications by 2024. That is, three out of four large companies in mature economies will use containers in production, compared to less than 35% currently. This represents more than doubling the market in less than three years, jumping from US$465.8 million to US$944 million. It's possible to imagine a rich continuation of this story.

♦ The beginning of everything.
Official history is always told by the victors, never by the vanquished. Therefore, history is always filled with heroism and effort, or with reinforcing one's own trajectory.

What is known is that the original codename for Kubernetes within Google was 'Project Seven', likely a reference to the character Seven of Nine from the science fiction series Star Trek, who is a Borg, or an individual of a pseudo-species of cybernetic organisms shown in the fictional universe.

Thus, the seven spokes of the rudder in the Kubernetes logo would be a reference to that codename. Another source says that Kubernetes means rudder in Greek, but we found nothing to prove this.

The truth is that the first version of Kubernetes was released on July 21, 2015. And, in parallel with the launch, Google, in partnership with the Linux Foundation, created the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to offer the technology to the market in a more comprehensive way and as an open platform.

♦ And here comes another story.
In the past decade, several Container Orchestration technologies competed with Kubernetes, including Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Cloud Foundry. However, due to its capabilities, popularity, and the creation of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Kubernetes ended up becoming the de facto standard for repository management.

Currently, dozens of technology vendors and cloud providers have offerings based on this project and provide solutions that are certified or complementary to Kubernetes, which is the second fastest-growing open-source project in history, behind only Linux.