September’s Mirantis Launchpad 2020 event offered plenty of options for those seeking to learn more about the latest trends in enterprise computing. Among the many topics and presenters, one theme stood out: In these uncertain times, the need for speed, flexibility and security in enterprise IT is greater now than ever before.

These needs were covered extensively at Launchpad, which included opening keynote remarks provided by Adrian Ionel, chairman and chief executive officer of Mirantis Inc. “This is meant to be a forum for learning, for sharing, for discovery and openness,” he said.

Support for mobile telecom

Customer use cases provided an in-depth look at how organizations were leveraging key tools and technologies to meet digital demands.

Reliance Jio has risen rapidly over the past five years to become the largest mobile telecom network in India. As a Mirantis customer, Reliance Jio now has 4,000 bare metal servers in OpenStack and is rapidly scaling toward the 10,000 mark, according to Mayank Kapoor, vice president of engineering at Reliance Jio.

“Mirantis has trained us on using GitOps and infrastructure-as-code,” said Kapoor, during his Launchpad presentation, who also described how Mirantis built Kubernetes as-a-service for Reliance Jio’s developers.

Another use case involved SEB, a leading Nordic financial services group. SEB is currently running approximately 1,000 services on 1,500 containers, as described by two of the bank’s IT staff in their Launchpad session. The company has been relying on Docker Enterprise to get key projects into production through the work of its developers.

“You should focus on the development part because you’re building a platform for developers, not for operations or security,” said Daniel Terry, lead designer at SEB.

State of Swarm

SEB plays a significant role in the Docker equation because it is also one of the largest active users of Swarm, a native clustering engine for containers. Another use case by a major Swarm user — S&P Global — was also part of the Launchpad program.

Mirantis made a decision this year to continue with the development of Swarm alongside its other Kubernetes offerings, and it offered a dedicated session on the “State of Swarm” in Docker Enterprise during the event. Presented by two Mirantis employees and a Docker Captain, the Swarm session covered not only how the container orchestration tool was easy to pick up, but also highlighted its ability to run in parallel with Kubernetes.

Launchpad included a number of Kubernetes-related sessions, including a deep dive into the roles of Lens and Kontena, recently acquired by Mirantis. This session was noteworthy because it was led by Miska Kaipiainen, senior director of engineering at Mirantis and the founder and CEO of Kontena.

Lens includes context-aware, multi-cluster management capabilities that work to integrate Kubernetes development across clouds, a key element behind Mirantis’ goal to facilitate the building of modern applications at scale.

“I’m amazed how many people have started using Lens already,” said Kaipiainen during his presentation. “It’s been out only for six months or so.”

Security and OpenStack

No major enterprise computing conference would be complete without a discussion of security and Launchpad included in at least two sessions dedicated to the topic. Mirantis engineers led one presentation on Docker content trust policy enforcement and managing container security.

A second session featured a focus on the security requirements of the most highly regulated industries. Orchestration pipelines can be foundational elements in compliance readiness, and the presenters noted that Docker Enterprise was the first container platform with a published Security and Technical Implementation Guide.

Mirantis has an extensive body of work in the OpenStack space. One session offered Launchpad participants a preview of Mirantis OpenStack on Kubernetes, which has been configured to run on the newly released Docker Enterprise Container Cloud.

“We look at OpenStack as a typical microservice architecture application that is organized into multiple little moving parts, which are connected to each other and talk to each other through the standard API,” said Artem Andreev, product manager at Mirantis. “Altogether that feels like a very good fit to run on top of a Kubernetes cluster.”

The sessions also offered a future focus. In addition to the OpenStack preview, a presenter from Seagate Technology PLC offered a glimpse into how the company was using Docker Enterprise and Kubernetes to establish artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities at the edge.

An additional focus on the use of artificial intelligence was the subject of a Mirantis-led session that outlined the application of AIOps solutions within the infrastructure. The company is researching novel ways to shrink the size of a compute platform through Unikernels, highly optimized application executables that include the operating system.

“Containers, like VMs, are just one way to handle compute,” said Shaun O’Meara, global field chief technology officer at Mirantis. “Unikernels have been around for a little while, but they are starting to get traction. I can run thousands, potentially, of these very tiny specific devices when I need them, so I’m kind of excited about it.”

To view all presentations from the Mirantis Launchpad 2020 event, click here.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Mirantis Launchpad 2020 digital event. Neither Mirantis Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Mirantis Inc.