DevOps engineers are always looking for ways to remove friction from the development pipeline and turbocharge their workflow.

They are finding it in an open-source project that extends Kubernetes beyond containers to simplify and speed cloud management.

“What we’re seeing now is the Kubernetes API is emerging as a way to standardize on literally everything in cloud … using a common approach, a common API layer, a common way to do access control, a common way to do policy, all built around open-source projects and the cloud native ecosystem,” said Bassam Tabbara (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Upbound Inc.

Tabbara spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Savannah Peterson at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Crossplane is enabling DevOps teams to standardize on Kubernetes across the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

To build a supercloud, you need a supercloud tool kit

TheCUBE was the first to identify the trend for the abstraction of the underlying primitives of hyperscale clouds to simplify the complexity of today’s hybrid, multicloud environments. We call this emerging computing architecture supercloud, but it is known as distributed cloud, cross-cloud, multicloud 2.0 and by other terms. The trend, however, is starting to enter the discussion at events such as KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022.

“We’re at a primetime spot where the control plane and data planes are in play as a viable architectural component of all the biggest conversations,” said Furrier, describing his excitement about finding supercloud, abstraction and interoperability coming up in mainstream conversations.

Upbound is the originator of the Crossplane open-source project, and both received shout-outs from the mainstage during the morning’s keynote speech for their work enabling organizations to build their own layer to run on top of cloud computing. Crossplane provides DevOps teams with an API-first framework for building control planes with a low code approach, or as Tabbara summarizes it: “Crossplane takes Kubernetes and extends it to beyond containers and to managing everything in cloud.”

This makes Crossplane essentially a “supercloud tool kit,” according to Furrier.

Crossplane enables developers to extend their knowledge of working with Kubernetes clusters to provide a consistent, standardized experience across the distributed cloud computing environment.

“If you love the model where you’re like, ‘I go to Kubernetes cluster and I tell it to run a bunch of containers and it does it for me and I walk away, you can do that for the rest of the surface area of cloud,’” Tabbara said.

The simplicity of Crossplane’s approach comes from the fact that it puts APIs first, according to Tabbara. Adoption is on the increase, especially in large enterprise environments which are hampered by the complexity of multicloud.

“We’re seeing a pattern now where these teams are standardizing on the Kubernetes API and standardizing on Crossplane and standardizing on things that make their life easier. They don’t have to replace what they’re doing, they just have to layer and use it,” Tabbara stated.

Upbound recently launched the Upbound Marketplace for the growing community of engineers building “as-a-service” products using Crossplane.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2022 event:

(* Disclosure: Upbound Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Upbound nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE