Technology is a wiggly beast. Every system and application has its own strengths, but few are designed to work together. To get the most from their tech infrastructure, companies must run a patchwork of solutions, every one demanding its own environment. Kubernetes, an open-source system for managing containerized applications, helps to tame this unruly herd by acting as a common layer between very different systems and programs, according to Craig McLuckie, founder and chief executive officer of Heptio Inc. and co-creator of Kubernetes.

But what does a Kubernetes install demand for itself?

“The thing that motivated me to start this company was the sense there was not an unfettered Kubernetes company in existence,” said McLuckie, who spoke to to Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, at SiliconANGLE’s Palo Alto, CA, studio.

The discussion included a look at Heptio, McLuckie’s new company, and the evolution of Kubernetes.

Kubernetes unshackled

Heptio was created to bring Kubernetes to the enterprise world. Most every vendor that offered Kubernetes attached it to other technologies, which didn’t necessarily fit the way people wanted to use the system, McLuckie explained. Companies were seeing success with Kubernetes, but wanted to use it in their own ways. A version of Kubernetes unshackled to any specific tech was needed.

Part of Kubernetes’s key value is that it supports a common framework in a very mixed world. Companies can bring together a wide variety of things to meet their needs. “It’s critical at this juncture that a layer emerges which allows customers to mix together the sort of things they want to use in a way that’s agnostic to operating environment,” McLuckie said.

Through history, a lot of platforms have created a tradeoff between what the business wants and the capabilities of the platform. Various services have specific strengths, so enterprise must have the ability to choose the service that makes sense for them, he said. One has to recognize that if a company has a significant tech investment, they will want to continue using that asset.

Beyond legacy tech investments, large companies also tend to acquire and build very mixed IT systems across their holdings. The world benefits from a common abstraction layer that allows businesses to train their people on a specific set of skills, McLuckie stated.

“Kubernetes is delivering on some of that promise in a way that resonates with customers,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Google Cloud Next 2017. (*Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE