It turns out that even banks are turning into full-blown software companies. Today Capital One Financial Corp. announced the beta test release of software to manage enterprises’ application containers.

Critical Stack, as the container “orchestration” service is called, is intended to provide large enterprises a way to use containers that provides robust security and regulatory compliance as the companies move more applications to the cloud. Containers are wrappers for applications that allow them to run unchanged on a variety of computer environments.

Many more companies are using containerized applications because they make it easier to move them among their own data centers and the cloud, depending on where they’re needed or are cheapest and easiest to deploy. The open-source container orchestration software Kubernetes, originally developed by Google LLC, has caught on as a default way to manage containers.

So who needs Critical Stack? “There is a big leap between open-source acceptance and implementing it for the enterprise,” Liam Randall, co-founder and president of Critical Stack Inc., said in an interview. Capital One, a marquee customer of the startup, acquired the company last year.

Randall said Critical Stack (pictured below) is compatible with Kubernetes but adds automation of security and compliance policies for companies in highly regulated industries.

Kubernetes is widely seen as at least somewhat difficult to set up, so another purpose of Critical Stack is to provide an easier graphical user interface, automated provisioning of server instances and other features to ease the task of managing containers. “I don’t need to tell the infrastructure how it needs to do its job,” Randall said.

There’s no cost to participate in the beta test, but Randall said the intention is to sell the software at varying tiers of participation, though he wasn’t very specific on how that could play out. He hopes to get feedback on how other companies use the software so it can be continually improved.

Asked why the company didn’t simply offer Critical Stack as open-source software, a common way for companies to accomplish similar goals, Randall said it may not be appropriate for enterprises that need bulletproof security and compliance.

Although it may seem strange for a bank to be selling software, this is far from Capital One’s first foray into software. It claims to be the first bank to move its core operations into the cloud. And for several years, it has been participating in a variety of open-source projects, including one it developed, called Cloud Custodian, that defines how compliance with security and other policies should be managed in Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud.

Pamela Rice, head of technology, strategy and innovation labs engineering, at Capital One, described some other ways the bank is developing new technologies, in an interview in October with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio:

Photo and screenshot: Capital One