Navigating cloud computing services can be difficult, especially when they come from multiple providers. Therefore, establishing a solid foundation becomes even more important in maintaining successful operations across today’s multicloud landscape. For IBM, that foundation is Kubernetes, the open-source tool for managing containerized software applications at scale.

“IBM has taken a big bet on Kubernetes two and a half years ago,” said Daniel Berg (pictured), distinguished engineer, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, at IBM. “[We] never really looked back; it’s our primary foundation for our platform services.”

Berg spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think event in San Francisco. They discussed IBM’s Kubernetes services and the business challenges of moving operations between private and public clouds. (* Disclosure below.)

Bridging the multicloud gap

The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service currently has two distributions: IBM Cloud Private, or ICP, which operates on-premises, and a managed service in the public cloud. So, what are the benefits of solely maintaining a private cloud with Kubernetes? The container management platform modernizes and organizes years-old content.

“We’ve modernized it, put it in containers, install it, and manage it on Kubernetes. The nice thing is that content you can bring on-premises where it’s needed the most and run it in ICP — and also take that and run it in our public cloud,” Berg explained.

Kubernetes is easy to install, set up, and get started. However, it is not without its problems. With greater proliferation comes greater difficulty in managing the different clusters, Berg pointed out. “There are still some complexities, because … you’ve got development clusters; you’ve got test clusters,” he said.

To alleviate the issue, IBM released a new product called Multicloud Manager, which provides a control plane to manage resources across many different clouds and disparate platforms. It works with ICP and IBM Kubernetes Service but is also compatible with Amazon, Google, Azure and OpenShift. Multicloud Manager also helps with security compliance and enforcement, so it provides security wherever it is lacking.

For organizations finding it less than feasible to maintain consistency and standards while customizing for specific data needs, Berg pointed out the benefits of multiple distributions. “If you need something that’s highly, highly specific to a given use case or you have differences in your infrastructure that you need to have more flexibility, that’s where IBM Cloud Private comes in,” he said.

Two clouds are better than one

Moving to public cloud in one fell swoop is a Herculean task, even for big companies such as Amazon and Google. This is where hybrid cloud comes in. In IBM’s case, it combines ICP and OpenShift to give OpenShift users IBM’s content, integrated monitoring, and integrated logging onto the platform for which they are already standardized.

“Because we built and are standardized on Kubernetes, we provide Kubernetes service and we do that at scale and secure, as well as highly available,” Berg stated.

Berg did warn against using only one cloud vendor, and he also advised organizations to be consistent in what they want out of their providers. “But the thing that customers do need to look at, and what they do need to standardize across an enterprise, is some of the core tenets and core technologies,” he added.

Visibility into workloads is also critical to a company’s operations, Berg explained. And IBM Cloud Monitoring does this. The tool is not unique to Kubernetes, either. Rather, it can be extended into virtual machines and different kinds of workloads. IBM’s monitoring is greatly helped by its partnership with Sysdig Inc., Berg added.

“You can’t build a cloud-native solution without monitoring, right? Monitoring and log … it’s like peanut butter and jelly. You’ve got to have them,” Berg concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think event. (* Disclosure: IBM sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE