Momentum for container technology has driven the Kubernetes’ management platform into the mainstream, and services for the open-source project look to scale up too.

As cloud computing priorities shift to accommodate data exchanges across a widening array of workloads, demand for hybrid cloud technology where portable, containerized technologies can deploy software applications among cloud and on-premises environments alike. To maintain a balance between the community-driven ecosystem that gave Kubernetes its edge and the expansive enterprise market leaning more heavily on the tool, Google Cloud is working to imbue the mainstream with a supported culture of open-source values.

“Open-source success is contingent on contribution, and this is the largest KubeCon ever,” said Aparna Sinha (pictured), group product manager for Kubernetes at Google Cloud, referring to last week’s KubeCon event in Seattle. “Eight thousand people, 2,000 on the waitlist. This is here to stay. It’s going to the mainstream.”

With a career’s worth of experience devoted to enterprise software, Sinha is working to develop Google LLC’s strategic, open-source-influenced approach to a changing market in need of solutions beyond standard tools.

Sinha sat down with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event. This week, theCUBE spotlights Aparna Sinha in its Women in Tech feature.

A developer-driven transition

Modernizing computing tech has taken a toll on businesses struggling to determine the appropriate distributions for complex legacy workloads, but the community has been reinvigorated by the support and opportunity for customization offered by Google Cloud through Kubernetes, according to Sinha.

“As soon as they get that environment up and running, their developers are all over it — and they have hundreds of services running within months,” she said.

New developments in container-based serverless technology through the Knative project are working to streamline hybrid systems and enable a more functional relationship between legacy infrastructures and cloud platforms. With so many customers using Kubernetes on-premises, standardizing a serverless solution for the environment furthers the container’s enterprise utility.

To ensure this new functionality can be maintained, Sinha’s team is working to harden Kubernetes and build in protections at scale. “That’s something we’ve been working on for the last year, adding a lot more security capabilities and hooks into enterprise storage and networking — building up the partners that will do the implementation,” she said.

Through its new technologies and supportive measures like Cloud Native Computing Foundation certification and training, Google Cloud is aiming to create a stronger community around developers. “This whole thing is about making your developers more productive,” Sinha said. “Developers have been driving this transition.”

Open-source culture at enterprise scale

The open-source culture that originated Kubernetes offers a unique flexibility that enables the creation of custom, per-use systems increasingly desired in the enterprise market. Recognizing the value of community in Kubernetes innovation, Google Cloud is keeping an open-source approach in the enterprise to sustain that experience throughout its widespread adoption.

“This is an open-source community; a lot of things comes from the users,” Sinha said.

The company is leveraging Kubernetes’ agility within companies unequipped for the modernization the current market is demanding, encouraging transformation in businesses traditionally slow to evolve, by offering simplified process tools and comprehensive support.

“Enterprises are being transformed by technology, whether transportation, retail, media,” Sinha said. “They want the best, and they don’t necessarily have the skills. They’re looking for a partner that’ll help them skill up, but also provide guidance.”

Google’s open approach especially appeals to companies comprised of franchise or multiple locations that need strong edge technology for processing onsite and in the cloud. “It’s a lot of different use cases, [but] the common thing is that they’re collecting data,” Sinha said. “They need a solution at their edge, thousands of these branch locations.”

Many of the large, regulated institutions Google supports are prohibited from full migration by compliance standards that require data remain on-premises. Through Kubernetes, Google can provide that agile environment within the company’s infrastructure, as well as streamline the workloads that can be virtualized for a unified organization, according to Sinha.

“There’s all this transformation, and there’s no holding it back,” she said. “Developers need that agile development environment.”

Creating economic opportunity

By working within an open-source ethos, Google’s value creation extends past the company itself and into the ecosystem at large. “It’s an action-oriented, hands-on audience, and in these customer meetings it’s an engineer-to-engineer conversation,” Sinha said. “They’re contributing back, and it makes the whole project better.”

The company is creating solutions for users across the spectrum, from those taking advantage of the fully managed Google Kubernetes Engine, or GKE, to enterprises building customizations on top. “We had Uber talking about how they’ve built all of this advanced capability on GKE; that’s a power user,” she said. “It’s really gratifying for us to work with the user base, as well as the community ecosystem.”

That community ecosystem is also seeing job growth in network engineering roles being ignited by the Kubernetes movement. Recent developments in container technology and the rising impact of KubeCon have made the event a popular one for recruiters, Sinha pointed out.

“The amount of job opportunity in Kubernetes — 230 percent growth in the last year,” she said. “Customers are here to talk about their experience but also to hire.”

Creating that economic value add, as well as an overall market opportunity for partners, is crucial to Google Cloud’s mission, and Kubernetes is enabling that opportunity. “So many of the companies that have come out of this ecosystem are now part of selling through Google Cloud,” she said.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE