Modern virtualization is becoming the new enterprise blueprint, bringing virtual machines and cloud-native applications together on Kubernetes. For large-scale providers, that means breaking down legacy storage silos and building a more flexible, protected and automated platform.

The key to this transition is ensuring that data remains mobile and protected regardless of workload type, according to Jeroen van Gemert (pictured, right), DevOps engineer at Koninklijke KPN N.V., a Dutch telecommunications and IT services provider. By treating virtual machines as declarative Kubernetes resources, platform teams can apply the same self-service and disaster recovery policies across their entire landscape. But while customer needs may vary, the bedrock remains the same.

“It doesn’t really matter that it’s internal or external customers. We have a base setup and we have some little deviations from that that should suit the customer and that’s the way we do it,” he said. “The base is the same for everybody because it’s still Kubernetes.”

Van Gemert and Joe Gardiner (left), assistant vice president of cloud and data sales, EMEA and LATAM, at Portworx by Everpure Inc. spoke with theCUBE’s Rebecca Knight and Paul Nashawaty at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed modern virtualization, the rise of sovereign cloud requirements and how collaborative engineering is helping organizations avoid the pitfalls of legacy lock-in. (* Disclosure below.)

Scaling the enterprise with modern virtualization

KPN offers a firsthand view of what it takes to run these environments in production, while Portworx sees the same pressures playing out across enterprises working to modernize storage and data protection. Many organizations still approach Kubernetes as an infrastructure modernization project, without fully addressing how data will be protected and managed across dynamic workloads, according to Gardiner.

“The organizations that struggle are the ones that think they can solve the data problem with an infrastructure answer,” Gardiner noted. “Traditional infrastructure was never designed to support these highly dynamic environments that we’re building with Kubernetes.”

Against that backdrop, enterprises are looking for ways to unify storage and data protection as they move VM workloads onto Kubernetes, reducing operational risk while improving resilience. By leveraging automated replication and application-aware backups, enterprises can now migrate thousands of VM volumes to Kubernetes with confidence. And the stakes are only rising as AI accelerates application development and puts even more pressure on platform teams to deliver scalable, resilient data services, Gardiner noted.

“I think we’re at an incredibly interesting time where we have these converging trends,” Gardiner said. “Of course, I have to mention AI — especially agentic AI — because that’s accelerating application development, and so the demand on the platform team now is greater than ever before because suddenly the number of applications being built is growing so rapidly because of what AI is giving us.”

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

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE