D2iQ Adds Government Edition of Kubernetes Management Platform
D2iQ has added an edition of its Kubernetes environment management platform tailored to meet the needs of government agencies.
Dan Ciruli, vice president of product for D2iQ, said DKP Gov edition of the D2iQ Kubernetes Platform (DKP) makes it simpler for government agencies that need to adhere to specific requirements set by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other government agencies.
For example, in addition to providing support for physically and air-gapped clusters, DKP Gov is FIPS 140-2 certified and complies with government specifications such as IL 2-6+ (JWICS), FENCES, C2S, SC2S, C1D and SIPR/NIPR.
Ciruli says government agencies are beginning to deploy cloud-native applications running on Kubernetes clusters in production environments at a faster pace. This acceleration is part of an effort to modernize DevSecOps workflows in the wake of an executive order issued by the Biden administration calling for improved application security. D2iQ already counts the Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Missile Defense, U.S. Space Force and U.S. Department of Homeland Security among its customers.
In addition, system integrators such as Northrop Grumman, GDIT, Lockheed Martin and SAIC are part of the D2iQ partner program. That’s critical, because unlike traditional enterprise IT organizations, many government agencies tend to rely on civilian contractors to provide IT services, notes Ciruli. He notes that hiring IT staff has always been an issue for government agencies that may not be able to pay as well as private industry employers.
Government agencies, however, will be at the forefront of deploying Kubernetes at the edge given the nature of the use cases involving, for example, defense, adds Ciruli. Many of those use cases involve air-gapped systems that need to be able to process and analyze data at the point where it is being captured and consumed.
Each government agency is on its own modernization journey, but it’s apparent that as a greater emphasis is placed on security and resiliency, a different approach to building and deploying applications is required. The challenge is that many of those agencies will soon find themselves managing fleets of Kubernetes clusters that were originally created by software engineers for other engineers. D2iQ provides a framework for managing Kubernetes clusters designed to be accessible to both DevOps professionals and the average IT administrator.
There is, of course, no standard control plane for managing Kubernetes clusters, but at this point, there is no shortage of commercial options. In the case of government agencies, however, the control and mechanisms used to manage Kubernetes need to be equated to the unique terminology that agencies have developed over the years to acquire and manage IT platforms. Providers of Kubernetes management frameworks need to invest in aligning the controls they provide with existing government-approved frameworks before agencies are allowed to acquire them, notes Ciruli.
One way or another, regardless of the amount of red tape involved, it’s apparent government agencies are making the transition to cloud-native applications running on Kubernetes clusters at the edge, in the cloud and almost everywhere in between.
