Knative, the open-source, Kubernetes-based platform for deploying and managing serverless and event-driven applications, is on the move.

In March, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation announced that it had accepted Knative as an incubating project after Google changed course and decided to donate the technology it originally developed in 2018. Red Hat, IBM, VMware and TriggerMesh have worked with Google to improve functionality for managing serverless and event-driven applications on top of Kubernetes.

The platform has attracted support from major enterprises, including Alibaba Cloud and Bloomberg, that currently use Knative in production.

“We see a lot of interest,” said Roland Huss (pictured, right), senior principal software engineer at Red Hat Inc. “We heard before the move that many contributors were not looking into Knative because of not being part of a mutual foundation. We are still ramping up and really hope for more contributors.”

Huss spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Keith Townsend and Paul Gillin at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Naina Singh (pictured, left), principal product manager at Red Hat, and they discussed Knative’s contribution to the serverless community and future enhancements for the platform. (* Disclosure below.)

New programming model

Red Hat has been working on a number of enhancements for Knative. These include developer support for container creation and further integration of Red Hat OpenShift Cloud Functions based out of Knative.

“With Knative, we are introducing a new programming model where you don’t even have to create containers; it will create containers for you,” Singh explained. “Container creation was on the developers, and Functions is going to be the third component of Knative that we are developing upstream, and Red Hat donated that project.”

Knative also offers an opportunity for enterprises to further explore the potential benefits of the serverless space. That could potentially bring more users into the fold as the prospects for compute cost savings become clearer.

“The big advantage of Knative is that you can scale down to zero,” Huss said. “That will bring more people on board because you can really save a lot of money with that if your applications are not running when they are not used. It is very cost effective.”

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

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event. Neither Red Hat Inc., the main sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE