Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to acquire Deis Inc., a startup that builds tools for the open-source application container management platform Kubernetes.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group at Microsoft, said Deis has been “at the center of container transformation.” Microsoft will be acquiring Deis directly from platform-as-a-service company Engine Yard Inc., which acquired Deis via its developer OpDemand LLC in 2015.

Containers, which make life a lot easier for software developers and operations teams by encapsulating the configuration and code needed to execute anywhere, also need a lot of automation to make deployment happen smoothly. Container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, originally developed by Google Inc., provide the environment and automation scaffolding.

That’s where Deis comes in, building tools to make the jobs of developers and operators easier. The company’s projects, to which Deis will continue to contribute after the acquisition, include Helm, a package and application manager; Workflow, a flexible containerized deployment and management system; and Steward, a Kubernetes-native service broker, a system that provides communication between applications, that’s currently in early development.

Deis Chief Technology Officer Gabriel Monroy touted the company’s open-source commitment in his blog post about the upcoming acquisition.

“Robust and open container orchestration, paired with new application architectures are giving organizations unprecedented flexibility and choice,” Monroy said. “From the early days of containers through the rise of Kubernetes, Deis has always been focused on building and contributing open-source technologies that make life easy for developers and operators to build and run applications.”

With the acquisition of Deis, Microsoft intends to integrate Kubernetes tools into the company’s existing cloud- and data center-based container systems. Microsoft services expected to benefit from expertise from Deis include platforms that run on Linux and Windows Server Containers as well as Hyper-V Containers and Azure Container Service.

Not only will Microsoft be handing over the keys to some useful container-based tools, but with this acquisition the company will also be bringing on a number of experts in Kubernetes and open-source container development. Microsoft has not currently released any details on the acquisition deal or the date of its finalization.

Image: Deis