Apprenda Announces Enterprise Kubernetes with Acquisition of Kismatic

TROY, N.Y., May 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Apprenda, a leading provider of cloud-native technologies for the enterprise, today announced that it now offers a commercial distribution of Kubernetes, along with new enterprise support subscriptions available to any company running Kubernetes. These new offerings come as an expansion of Apprenda’s acquisition of Kismatic, the enterprise Kubernetes company. Kubernetes is a fast-growing open-source project created by and based on Google’s 10+ years of experience managing Linux container-based workloads at massive scale.

As the world moves toward a container-centric IT model, Apprenda’s acquisition of Kismatic will accelerate the company’s vision of powering the transition to cloud-native applications and enabling developers to build software quickly and reliably. Patrick Reilly, CEO and founder of Kismatic and governing board member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, will become Apprenda’s corporate CTO and lead its Kubernetes strategy. Prior to Kismatic, Patrick founded Orly Atomics, which was acquired by Mesosphere.

Apprenda’s cloud platform enables companies to develop, deploy and manage the thousands of existing applications in their portfolios as well as quickly deliver cloud-native applications and microservices. In March 2016, Apprenda announced it would adopt Kubernetes to add further support for cloud-native applications and that it would build Kubernetes support for Windows Server and .NET.

“The Kismatic team is an influential part of the Kubernetes community,” Sinclair Schuller, CEO and co-founder of Apprenda, said. “Kismatic’s expertise and work on Kubernetes made their team highly attractive and will accelerate our rapidly growing business. They know Kubernetes better than almost anyone, so they will be central in expanding Apprenda’s plans.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, the Kismatic team will add depth to Apprenda’s already impressive roster of talent. Apprenda will continue to expand Kismatic’s existing business operations, including:

  • Supporting subscriptions that provide Kubernetes users with guaranteed SLAs for production and non-production Kubernetes instances.
  • Offering professional services that help customers define and extend cloud strategies related to containers and Kubernetes.
  • Providing tooling related to Kubernetes and its intersection with the Apprenda platform including Kubernetes enterprise plugins for identity management (LDAP/Active Directory), Kerberos authentication, and rich auditing for heavily regulated industries.

As part of their major contributions to the Kubernetes project, Kismatic contributed the open-source dashboard for Kubernetes. Recently, Kismatic donated the KubeCon conference to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. The third KubeCon will occur this November in Seattle and is expected to draw more than 1,000 attendees.

“We are tremendously excited to join Apprenda,” Reilly said. “Apprenda has impressed us over the years. The largest enterprises need Apprenda’s help to manage existing apps and new cloud-native apps on the same platform. Now we can bring Kismatic’s expertise into the fold and add additional value.”

Supporting Quotes

Chris Aniszczyk, Executive Director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation:

“CNCF is excited about the latest development with two of our founding members Apprenda and Kismatic. With this acquisition, the industry benefits are manifold with a more robust company committed to advancing CNCF technology and the transition to a new cloud-native computing paradigm. If companies do not bridge the gap between traditional IT and cloud native technologies, they could fall considerably behind.”

Joe Beda, Co-Founder of Kubernetes:

“I am excited to see Kismatic join Apprenda to accelerate adoption of Kubernetes in large enterprises. Kubernetes is fast becoming the universal standard building block for leading cloud-native platforms.”

Ken Owens, CTO of Cloud Infrastructure Services at Cisco:

“With Apprenda’s acquisition of Kismatic, it should be clear that cloud-native architectures are seeing significant demand in large enterprises. Kubernetes has quickly become a leading building block for such architectures.”

Fintan Ryan, Industry Analyst at RedMonk:

“The developer transition to cloud-native apps has already begun, and Kubernetes is one of the key technologies developers are looking to to meet their deployment and operational needs. In acquiring Kismatic, and further enhancing their product offerings with Kismatic’s technology, Apprenda is helping developers on their cloud-native transition while protecting existing application investments in enterprise organizations.”

Jay Lyman, Research Manager for Cloud Management and Containers at 451 Research:

“Use of containers and container-management software is rapidly growing among enterprise organizations, but many gaps remain in making containers truly enterprise ready. Apprenda’s acquisition of Kismatic could help to address enterprise concerns around containers given both players are focused on production deployment as much as development and testing with containers.”

Brian Gracely, Lead Cloud Analyst at Wikibon:

“As more companies leverage containers as part of their digital transformation, it is critical for them to look for platforms that can help them integrate cloud-native applications and existing applications. Kubernetes is becoming the leading container-management technology, and this acquisition will help Apprenda accelerate customers’ transformations.”

About Apprenda
Apprenda is the leading enterprise cloud platform powering the next generation of enterprise software development in public, private and hybrid clouds. As a foundational software layer and application run-time environment, Apprenda removes the complexities of building and delivering modern software applications, enabling enterprises to innovate faster. With Apprenda, enterprise development teams can securely deliver an entire ecosystem of data, services, applications and APIs to internal and external customers across any infrastructure. Visit Apprenda at www.apprenda.com or follow us on Twitter at @apprenda.

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Miles Blatstein

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