With software containers rapidly emerging as a foundation for enterprise developers to build and distribute business applications, advocates are increasingly turning to tools such as Kubernetes to help them orchestrate their deployments.

Kubernetes, which takes its name from the Greek word for “Helmsman” or “Pilot,” is an open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications. Developed by Google Inc., it works by grouping containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Most developers agree it’s a useful tool that automates many painful hours of work that developers would otherwise have to do by themselves. The problem is that Kubernetes itself is also very complex.

Knowing this, a startup called Codefresh Inc. said it’s planning to “democratize” Kubernetes on Google Inc.’s Cloud Platform. The company said today it’s collaborating with Google to offer a new “quick-start” integration for deploying Google Container Engine, which is the cloud giant’s managed Kubernetes service. With the new service, Codefresh says that novice users can begin testing and deploying code on Kubernetes with a continuous integration and deployment pipeline model in as little as ten minutes.

Codefresh said this is important because Kubernetes is well on its way to becoming the industry-standard container orchestration platform. It cites a recent study from 451 Research Inc. that shows 71 percent of developers using containers do so with Kubernetes. It also points as evidence to the rich ecosystem of vendors providing managed Kubernetes clusters on Google and Microsoft’s clouds, as well as GitHub’s recent announcement that it too is switching to Kubernetes.

Despite its popularity, Codefresh said, Kubernetes’ rich feature set presents a steep learning curve for developers, who would typically spend many hours and make numerous mistakes trying to get to grips with it. Indeed, the learning curve is so steep that it has prevented many small and midsized organizations from adopting the technology, as they don’t have the resources to spend on learning it, Codefresh said.

“When you start deploying to Kubernetes there are lots of decisions to make and a whole language to understand,” the company said in an email to SiliconANGLE. “Codefresh has a boilerplate Kubernetes configuration that can be easily modified and works out of the box for most applications. With this integration you can just log in through the UI to your Google Cloud console and immediately access all your clusters and add them to pipelines. The only code you provide is the code you want to actually deploy.”

With the integration, it’s possible to run application builds, tests and deployments both automatically or manually, Codefresh said. The new service not only lets new users get started quickly, but also benefits more experienced developers too, as it simplifies the process of customizing configurations, according to the company.

“Google Cloud is a powerful partner for Codefresh, with a strong expertise in helping the enterprise launch and scale containers,” said Raziel Tabib, chief executive officer and cofounder of Codefresh.

Codefresh said its new quick-start integration service with Google Container Engine is available now, and is planning to host a webinar at the end of this month in order to demonstrate its capabilities.

Image: Kubernetes