The Linux Foundation is teaming up with 18 technology giants and IT organizations to create the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an initiative that’s hoping to make it easier for businesses to build and deploy containerized cloud applications oriented around microservices.

The main goal of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is to determine the current state of interoperability between popular technologies that are built atop of the Open Container Project specifications that were announced last month, said Docker engineer Patrick Chanezon in an interview with The Register. Meanwhile, to avoid any confusion with other OCP organizations (like the Open Compute Project), the Open Container Project has been renamed as the Open Container Initiative (OPI).

“This new organization aims to advance the state-of-the-art for building cloud native applications and services, allowing developers to take full advantage of existing and to-be-developed open source technologies,” said the Linux Foundation in a press release.

Not surprisingly, Docker Inc. and Google are two of the biggest contributors to the CNCF, which defines “cloud-native apps” as containerized, dynamically scheduled and micro service-orientated applications. Should the CNCF decide that more work is required to foster interoperability, the foundation will take the lead in developing whatever APIs are necessary.

Other founding members of the CNCF include AT&T Inc., Box, Cisco Systems Ltd., CoreOS Inc., Cycle Computing LLC, eBay Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., IBM, Intel Corp., Joyent Inc., Mesosphere Inc., Twitter, Switch Supernap, Univa Corp., VMware Inc., and Weaveworks Inc. Chanezon told The Register that the CNCF is still open to other organizations that might be interested in joining.

Besides ensuring the interoperability of cloud native tech, the CNCF is also hoping to prevent organizations from being “locked in” to any single technology, Chanezon explained.

Google’s contribution to the CNCF includes donating the source code of its Kubernetes container management software. Going forward, the foundation will be responsible for governing that code’s future development. Google launched Kubernetes 1.0 yesterday, and the software already comprises over 14,000 code commits.

The CNCF will also establish and work with an End User Advisory Board, to ensure that its work is in line with what customers actually need. For more information about the CNCF, check out its shiny new website.

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