Open-source software provider Canonical Ltd. introduced a couple of new consulting packages today to support enterprise Kubernetes deployments in public and private clouds and on so-called bare-metal servers dedicated to a single customer.

The company also said it’s expanding its partnerships with a number of container software specialists, including Galactic Fog Inc., a provider of serverless infrastructure, and Rancher Labs Inc., which builds container management workflow software. Containers are portable software wrappers that allow applications to run in multiple computers in the cloud.

Canonical, which develops the popular Ubuntu operating system based on Linux, said its new Kubernetes Explorer consulting package is aimed at those running existing cloud infrastructures, while the Kubernetes Discoverer package is designed for those running bare-metal clouds and containers. The idea is to provide assistance to organizations that lack the skills to get Kubernetes containers up and running by themselves.

With Kubernetes Explorer, Canonical is offering consulting services for Kubernetes deployments on public, private and VMware Inc. clouds. The package costs $15,000, and includes reference architecture, training, and deployment, with the option of additional consulting services for building continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines to support everyday container operations.

Kubernetes Discoverer is geared toward bare-metal deployments. It costs $35,000, and provides specialist consulting so organizations can optimize their architecture for specific workloads. Other benefits include customization and integration of storage and networking options, as well as hands-on training delivered on site.

As for the expanded partnerships, Canonical said its Kubernetes platform now supports Galactic Fog’s serverless infrastructure on public clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Serverless infrastructure refers to a cloud execution model in which the allocation of machine resources is managed dynamically by the provider, so customers don’t have to worry about the details of provisioning servers themselves. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by an application, rather than on prepurchased units of capacity.

Canonical said it’s also supporting Rancher Lab’s container management workflow software, as well as Weaveworks Inc.’s Weave Cloud offering, which is a software as a service that simplifies deployment, monitoring and management for containers and microservices.

“Enterprises can cut through the complexity to discover the power of Kubernetes with Ubuntu’s reference architecture and services,” said Steve George, chief operating officer at Weaveworks. “Combining Canonical Kubernetes with Weave Cloud’s comprehensive management and monitoring delivers a powerful and efficient platform for DevOps practitioners to deploy and operate sophisticated apps at scale, on any infrastructure.”

The new offerings and partnerships are intended to strengthen Canonical’s position as one of the leading providers of enterprise container services. Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system is already the No. 1 choice in public cloud virtual machine deployments, and the company was also one of the first to support the Kubernetes platform.

Image: Canonical