Former Google executives and key creators of Kubernetes Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda have jointly launched their venture, called Heptio. The latest move is aimed to support and advance Kubernetes ecosystem and “smoothen” production use of Docker containers.
Seattle-based Heptio has raised a $8.5 million funding round to start working on advancements for the enterprise IT and cloud developments. Notably, its co-founders have quite long experience in the cloud world and both worked at Microsoft prior to Google.
Brings Kubernetes to enterprises
An official release by Heptio states that it is set to bring Google-backed Kubernetes to enterprises to “accelerate software development, increase infrastructure efficiency and reduce the complexity of managing software at scale”.
Although apart from Google, Kubernetes is being supported by companies such as Canonical, IBM, Red Hat and VMWare, it is yet to become the first-choice for developers. This is where Heptio is aiming to hit the striker.
“While the technology is incredibly powerful, we have seen developers struggle to get up and running quickly. Heptio’s early focus is on making Kubernetes more accessible to developers running apps on-premises or in the public cloud,” said McLuckie, CEO, in the release.
In addition to easing Kubernetes deployments, Heptio is on the move to work with an open ecosystem to uplift the existing platform. It also has plans to use the power of open source to enable enterprise features to Kubernetes.
Different from Google’s support
Google keeps on improving Kubernetes and making it more friendly for cloud and infrastructure developments. But unlike giving a limited set of options, Heptio is apparently targeting to open the platform for enterprises to fit in the framework for any of their software needs. This is how it would reduce complexity.
“We are pleased to see entrepreneurs like Craig and Joe who were instrumental in the formation of CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation), stepping forward to help enterprises adopt powerful new technologies like Kubernetes,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, the Linux Foundation.
Developments like Heptio are likely to ease IT implementations among enterprises and bring technologies such as Kubernetes on the front foot. All this would also enhance the relation between cloud and containers.
