Open-source Linux company SUSE announced on Tuesday the general release of its new container as a service platform that first appeared in beta in March.

SUSE Container as a Service is the latest piece in the company’s growing software-defined infrastructure suite, which integrates open-source technology to drive next-generation innovations. CaaS is a model where information technology organizations and developers can work together to build, ship and run their applications anywhere. It enables a secured and managed application environment consisting of content and infrastructure, from which developers can build and deploy applications in a self-service manner.

SUSE isn’t the first company to offer a container as a service product. That honor goes to CoreOS Inc.’s Container Linux, but SUSE argues that its SUSE Enterprise Linux Server provides a solid base for modern enterprises looking to transform their information technology through software containers.

The company said SUSE Container as a Service incorporates three main components. It runs atop of SUSE’s purpose-built operating system, SUSE MicroOS, which is based on Linux. It also incorporates both the Docker and Linux LXC containers, which can be installed and configured via the Salt DevOps program. Finally, SUSE Container as a Service uses an orchestration system based on Kubernetes, which manages the deployment of containers.

SUSE said the main benefit of its container as a service is that IT operations teams and developers can provision, manage and scale applications and services on it much faster.

“Container innovation is improving how applications are developed and run, but companies don’t want to have to set up and maintain a complex and secure container infrastructure by themselves,” said Thomas Di Giacomo, chief technology officer at SUSE. “They want to focus on creating applications that bring value to their business. So SUSE is providing an easy-to-use container infrastructure solution that helps them deploy next-generation, cloud-native container-based applications and progressively migrate traditional and existing apps.”

SUSE reckons its container platform offers three key business advantages, including reduced time to market, increased operational efficiency through automation, and improved application lifecycle management via DevOps integration.

“SUSE envisions several key use cases for its CaaS platform, including the enablement of DevOps and microservices implementations for faster and more automated application releases across different infrastructure,” Jay Lyman, 451 Research Inc.’s principal analyst for cloud management and containers, said in a statement. “Organizations interested in enterprise-grade security, reliability and scalability with containers are the ones most likely to be interested in the SUSE CaaS Platform.”

Considering that pretty much every company today is showing an interest in containers, it should mean there’s a big opportunity for SUSE to make its mark in what is still very much an emerging market.

Images: SUSE