Akuity Inc., a startup that makes it easier for enterprises to build and deploy Kubernetes-based container applications, today announced new artificial intelligence capabilities in its flagship platform.

The new features help customers keep their applications running smoothly by automatically detect degraded states, triaging incidents and autonomously implementing fixes to prevent any downtime.

The startup, which raised $20 million in Series A funding in May 2022, has developed a cloud-native GitOps platform that enables enterprises to build and run cloud-native applications on Kubernetes. GitOps is a set of practices that uses Git as a single source of truth for managing infrastructure and application configurations, allowing for automated deployment and version control, while Kubernetes is used to support software containers that host the components of modern apps that can run on any platform.

Akuity’s software is an enterprise-grade version of the open-source Argo CD project on which it’s based. Argo is the third-biggest project managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, after Kubernetes and OpenTelemetry. Known as the Akuity Platform, it encompasses components such as Akuity Deploy, which is an artificial intelligence-based agent that’s able to manage thousands of Kubernetes clusters to automate application deployment.

Other key elements of the platform are Akuity Promote, which is a “continuous promotion orchestration layer” that removes the need for developers to create custom scripts, and Akuity Monitor, a tool that helps teams to keep tabs on all of their Kubernetes resources and automate troubleshooting.

With today’s updates, Akuity is unleashing the full power of AI agents so companies can move beyond simple troubleshooting and embrace AI-enabled remediation. Co-founder and Chief Executive Hong Wang, who is also the co-creator of the Argo project, said the new capabilities mean customers will be able to detect incidents the moment their application workloads begin to drift from a “healthy state,” and take action to fix them automatically.

In addition, Akuity users now gain a single portal through which they can centralize all incident context with logs, events, metrics and deployment histories all located in the same place to avoid tool-switching. By automatically deploying “runbooks,” the platform can resolve many incidents without needing to alert on-call engineers. Moreover, it introduces stronger enterprise-grade controls with approval gates, scoped permissions and audit trails to ensure the new automations are compliant and secure.

Wang explained that the new AI capabilities are built on context and insights derived from Kubernetes clusters. “Akuity’s new AI capabilities enable developers to detect, troubleshoot and remediate issues with just a few clicks,” he said. “Issues that may have taken days and multiple developers to resolve can now be fixed in minutes.”

Enterprises are going to welcome the updates, because most Kubernetes users still struggle with its complexity, especially in terms of deployment consistency, release promotion and cross-cluster visibility, said Paul Nashawaty, application development and modernization practice lead at SiliconANGLE Media’s sister organization theCUBE Research.

The analyst pointed to a recent study by theCUBE Research, which found that more than 70% of organizations cite scalability and reliability as their biggest Kubernetes pain points. He said the new AI capabilities will go some way towards addressing these challenges.

“Akuity Intelligence can troubleshoot and remediate issues autonomously, or with a human in the loop,” Nashawaty said. “This GitOps-driven approach enables organizations to move beyond DIY scripting and brittle operations to a more reliable, secure and automated Kubernetes operating model.”

Image: Akuity