It has been a little under six years since the container orchestration tool Kubernetes was initially released. While that may not seem like a long time to some, it’s long enough for the technology to work itself into the mainstream of enterprise operations to the point where businesses are applying Kubernetes as a new tool to enhance how existing products and processes work.

“It’s about making the new thing work the old way,” said Kelsey Hightower (pictured), staff developer advocate at Google Cloud. “You’re getting the more traditional vendors showing up and adding their Kubernetes integrations, and they’re making the new thing more familiar to the people having the existing tool. That firewall you’re using? We now have Kubernetes support.”

Hightower spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host John Troyer during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference in San Diego. They discussed new technologies aided by use of the orchestration tool, reasons for Kubernetes’ continued popularity and the need for keeping the right perspective in open-source (see the full interview with transcript here).

Room to explore new ideas

While Kubernetes is being used now by more traditional providers for managing already entrenched functions, the tool has also generated its share of new applications.

“When we take the larger components of Kubernetes and extract out that Kubernetes API, you get Istio, you get network control planes, you get people building 5G infrastructure using the Kubernetes model,” Hightower noted. “It’s only natural that people start moving up the stack, and I expect more fragmentation to explore a new idea, even if it’s only for a small subset of the market.”

Part of the reason for Kubernetes’ popularity is that it helps solve a central infrastructure issue that is common across the compute ecosystem, according to Hightower.

“Kubernetes represents a problem that most people have,” Hightower said. “If you went down the Linux and then virtualization path, you ended up with a bunch of virtualization machines that you need to glue together. Kubernetes resonates with almost everyone who is using virtualization, and this is why it’s so popular.”

The strength of Kubernetes has commanded a great deal of attention within the open-source community, yet Hightower is mindful of the need for the proper perspective. The philosophy of open-source is not to let too much of developer community become fixated on one, albeit wildly successful, project.

“It’s people over projects always,” Hightower said. “There’s going to be a time where we have to jump off; there’s going to be a time where we have to learn from the other communities. Let the ecosystem become the marathon, and let it keep running.”

Here’ the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon:

Photo: SiliconANGLE