Platform9, the next-generation open cloud company, today announced immediate availability of Platform9 Managed Kubernetes support for single pane management across bare metal, enterprise Linux distributions, VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform environments. This expanded support, made possible by Platform9's unique SaaS architecture and significant engineering investments in hybrid cloud management in the past year, enables enterprises to simplify development and operations of applications using Kubernetes as the hybrid cloud platform.

Enterprise CIOs face the challenge of managing an increasingly fragmented infrastructure landscape across data center technologies such as VMware vSphere, enterprise Linux and the KVM hypervisor, and Nutanix's emerging Acropolis Hypervisor; and the major public cloud providers Amazon, Azure and Google. The resulting silos differ in their user experience, governance controls and APIs which creates a chaotic consumption experience and ultimately, slows down the realization of a true hybrid cloud architecture that the enterprise can standardize on.

Kubernetes promises to address this problem, since it offers a cloud agnostic consumption experience and has integrations with several of these environments. However, traditional ways of deploying Kubernetes - such as using a software installer - implement Kubernetes in an infrastructure specific manner. As a result, Kubernetes itself becomes remains confined as part of the infrastructure silo. In addition, many Kubernetes solutions are greatly limited in their support for multiple infrastructure platforms. Platform9's SaaS architecture decouples the Kubernetes management plane from infrastructure that is used to deploy clusters and as a result, Kubernetes can be used to provide a single pane management experience across any infrastructure, eliminating silos. Additionally, Platform9's experience of integrating OpenStack with these infrastructure technologies has accelerated the path for Managed Kubernetes to support all of these integrations.

"Even after all public cloud providers support Kubernetes, a management problem still exists - on average, a typical large enterprise is fragmented with use of at least four different on-premises and public cloud environments at some scale," said Sirish Raghuram, co-founder and CEO at Platform9. "To address this problem, enterprises need an infrastructure agnostic solution that integrates deeply with these platforms, but exposes an elegant consumption interface to developers. With today's announcement, Platform9 is providing enterprises the freedom to adopt Kubernetes-based cloud native applications along with a hybrid/multi-cloud architecture without being locked in by existing infrastructure investments."

With Platform9 Managed Kubernetes support for single pane management, enterprises will benefit from:

• A single, consistent cloud experience to deploy, manage and consume cloud native applications across all major public and private cloud infrastructure
• Increased productivity since developers and DevOps can focus on solving core business problems while reducing time wasted on managing fragmented environments
• Consistent workflows and policy controls to ensure governance of applications
• Enhanced efficiency by reducing redundant investments in infrastructure
• Reduced operational complexity in managing hybrid clouds

Since Platform9 announced general availability of Managed Kubernetes in January 2017, the product has experienced significant growth and momentum. Most recently, the company's Managed Kubernetes solution was recognized as a 2017 CRN Tech Innovator Award winner in the Container Technology category. Customers added to the roster include Cadence Design, CSPi and Crunch. In addition, the company announced that it is managing more than 50 enterprise cloud regions with Managed Kubernetes since general availability earlier in the year.