Spectro Cloud Unveils Hybrid Cloud Platform Based on Kubernetes
Spectro Cloud this week launched a namesake platform for managing multiple distributions of Kubernetes that will be at the heart of many hybrid cloud computing environments.
Company CEO Tenry Fu says Spectro Cloud employs a declarative model to define cluster profiles that can be used to automate deployment and maintenance of Kubernetes clusters across the extended enterprise. That approach not only enables IT teams to centralize the management of Kubernetes environments regardless of physical location, but the declarative tools also make it possible for the average IT administrator to manage those clusters, he says.
Most IT organizations today already employ multiple clouds, to one degree or another. However, each of those clouds is managed in isolation. Each cloud computing environment may be a less expensive means for deploying an application workload but in aggregate the total cost of IT increases as IT organizations set up teams to manage and master the nuances of each cloud environment. Kubernetes presents an opportunity to rein in those costs because it provides applications with a consistent set of application programming interfaces (APIs) regardless of which distribution is employed. However, many IT teams lack the expertise required to operationalize Kubernetes at scale. A declarative approach to managing Kubernetes means IT operations teams don’t necessarily need programming skills to manage IT infrastructure as code.
Scheduled to be available next quarter, Spectro Cloud will also enable IT organizations to retain control over their extended IT environments, Fu says. Rather than getting locked into a specific cloud computing platform, Kubernetes makes it much easier to move workloads between clouds. The company, which recently raised an additional $7.5 million in funding, is positioning itself to become the platform via which IT leaders can achieve and maintain that control without sacrificing agility and flexibility, says Fu.
It remains to be seen how many IT organizations will embrace Kubernetes to drive a hybrid cloud computing strategy rather than backing into hybrid cloud computing once they discover how pervasively Kubernetes has been deployed in multiple clouds and their on-premises IT environments. The issue IT leaders will need to be circumspect of is how much they may have become dependent on proprietary APIs exposed by cloud service providers to run their application workloads.
Naturally, Spectro Cloud is not the only vendor that envisions the dawning of a new era of IT management based on Kubernetes. There is a raft of startups focusing on hybrid cloud computing, while incumbent vendors ranging from IBM and VMware to Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Microsoft have all recognized the inevitability of hybrid cloud computing. Rather than facing a dearth of platforms to manage hybrid clouds, it’s probable most organizations will find themselves trying to navigate a plethora of options.
Clearly, Spectro Cloud is maneuvering to usurp incumbents by making available an IT management platform for Kubernetes clusters available to IT organizations that are moving in that direction sooner than later.
