Oracle Extends Kubernetes Reach

At the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 conference, Oracle announced that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Broker for Kubernetes clusters is now generally available as open source software.

Bob Quillin, vice president of developer relations for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, says extending Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Broker to Kubernetes will make it easier for enterprise IT organizations to embrace cloud-native applications. Based on the Open Service Broker application programming interface (API) project developed under the auspices of the Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF), the instance curated by Oracle has become a cornerstone of the company’s hybrid cloud computing strategy, which has been extended to include cloud-native applications based on Kubernetes, he says.

OCI Service Broker Architecture

This latest offering joins a host of other open source projects supported by Oracle that includes Helidon, a set of Java libraries for building microservices; the GraalVM universal virtual machine; the Fn Project, for adding a serverless computing framework to an IT environment; MySQL Operator for Kubernetes; and the WebLogic Operator for Kubernetes. Oracle also recently launched Oracle Cloud Developer Image, an offering on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that includes Oracle Linux, Oracle Java SE, GraalVM, Terraform and a variety of software development kits (SDKs).

Quillin says all these efforts are intended to enable enterprise IT organizations to extend the life of their investments in Java applications. While many front-end applications are being built in a variety of languages, most backend enterprise applications are written in Java, he notes.

At the same time, Oracle is encouraging enterprise IT organizations to migrate as many of those applications as possible to a public cloud on which Oracle manages everything from Kubernetes clusters to the databases those applications access. In fact, there may be no better time to make a switch to managed infrastructure delivered by Oracle, as application servers running monolithic applications give way to microservices-based applications that usually are easier to build, deploy and manage on a public cloud, says Quillin.

That approach not only allows IT organizations to divert more resources to building applications, but it also enables organizations to learn how to implement best DevOps practices in collaboration with Oracle rather than trying to master those processes on their own. That’s especially critical as enterprise IT organizations begin to appreciate the need to dynamically meld DevOps and DataOps processes to provide applications that are being deployed and updated continuously with access to enterprise data, adds Quillin.

When it comes to emerging technologies, no enterprise IT organization is going to be able to turn on a dime. For example, it’s not clear how many enterprise applications will run in the public cloud. But as demand for more agility with enterprise IT organizations continues to reach crescendo levels, the need to more flexibly build and deploy applications is now forcing both the cloud- and microservices-based applications issues at the exact same time.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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