As AI workloads pile onto already complex Kubernetes environments, platform teams are being asked to do more with the same people. Mirantis is betting that the answer is not more infrastructure, but smarter operations. In this pre-show Q&A with VMblog, Scott Parker, Product Marketing Manager at Mirantis, explains how the company is pairing hardened Kubernetes management through Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (MKE) with AI-assisted operations designed to speed up troubleshooting, upgrades and remediation. Parker is clear that the goal is to help AI take on more infrastructure work without taking control away from the people accountable for it.
That emphasis on control runs through the entire conversation. Parker details how the new AI-assisted operations software introduced at KubeCon pairs autonomous SRE assistance with policy-driven isolated sandboxes, configurable token spending caps, complete audit logging and a one-click emergency stop. He also covers the open-source foundations of k0s and k0rdent, the security and compliance posture of MKE, and the role of MOSK for organizations reassessing VMware-based private clouds. For attendees heading to Salt Lake City, he shares details on the Pre-KubeCon Customer Showcase Meetup on Monday, November 9, plus live demos, raffles and swag at Booth #232 in Hall 3 beginning at 12:00 PM on November 10.
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VMblog: What’s your elevator pitch for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026? If attendees only remember one thing about your company after visiting your booth, what should it be?
Scott Parker: Mirantis helps enterprises modernize infrastructure while keeping production operations secure, reliable and under their control. At KubeCon, we’re bringing together hardened Kubernetes management through Mirantis Kubernetes Engine, or MKE, and AI-assisted operations.
If attendees remember one thing, it should be this: AI can take on more infrastructure work without taking control away from the people responsible for it. Our focus is helping platform teams troubleshoot faster, manage upgrades with confidence and introduce automation within clear operational boundaries.
VMblog: CNCF has introduced a brand-new “AI Inference + Agentic” track for 2026, covering GPU scheduling, model serving, and observability for production AI systems. Where does your company fit into that conversation, and what’s driving your investment there?
Parker: Our focus at KubeCon is the operational foundation that makes production AI sustainable – and how AI agents can help operate that foundation.
Platform teams are already managing complex Kubernetes environments while supporting new AI workloads. Adding more infrastructure without addressing the operational burden creates a scaling problem for the people running it. MKE provides the hardened Kubernetes foundation for those workloads. k0rdent, the open-source project MKE builds on, manages clusters declaratively through Cluster API and can deploy the NVIDIA GPU Operator to the clusters it manages.
What is driving our investment is the need to move from impressive demonstrations to dependable operations, with security, accountability and human oversight built in.
VMblog: Beyond the booth presence, what’s your broader community engagement strategy for KubeCon NA 2026? How are you contributing to the cloud-native ecosystem’s growth?
Parker: Our products build on open-source projects, including k0s and k0rdent, and our commitment includes upstream development and open, standards-based infrastructure. k0s provides a lightweight Kubernetes foundation, while k0rdent enables declarative management of clusters through Cluster API.
We also see KubeCon as an opportunity to listen. Conversations with platform engineers and enterprise operators help connect project development with production requirements. Our planned pre-show customer meetup will provide another setting for technical previews, roadmap discussions and customer discovery.
VMblog: Let’s get technical—what specific architectural challenges or operational bottlenecks does your solution address for cloud-native teams heading into 2027?
Parker: Three challenges come up repeatedly: upgrading Kubernetes without disrupting applications, operating growing fleets of clusters consistently, and reducing the time engineers spend diagnosing recurring problems.
MKE addresses lifecycle management with in-place upgrades designed to preserve compatibility, supported by k0s and k0rdent as its underlying foundation. Declarative cluster management helps teams apply consistent practices across environments.
At KubeCon, we’re introducing AI-assisted operations to address the troubleshooting burden through real-time cluster investigation, automated root-cause analysis and proactive remediation. Together, these capabilities help platform teams spend less time maintaining infrastructure and more time improving the services developers depend on.
VMblog: Agentic AI workflows are emerging as a new class of Kubernetes workload, with autonomy and orchestration requirements that differ from traditional services. How is your platform adapting to support these agentic systems?
Parker: Agents introduce a different operational question: what should a system be allowed to do on its own? For infrastructure operations, that requires explicit boundaries. The AI-assisted operations software we’re introducing at KubeCon combines autonomous SRE assistance with policy-driven isolated sandboxes, configurable token spending caps, complete audit logging and a one-click emergency stop.
That makes human oversight a practical part of the platform. Teams can establish the boundaries within which agents operate, maintain visibility into their actions and stop activity when necessary. The goal is to make automation useful in production environments where accountability matters as much as speed.
VMblog: Platform engineering continues reshaping how organizations approach cloud-native infrastructure. What’s your perspective on this shift, and how does your technology enable effective platform teams and internal developer platforms?
Parker: Platform engineering succeeds when developers gain a dependable path to production and platform teams can maintain it without becoming a bottleneck.
That requires consistent infrastructure, repeatable lifecycle management and security controls that don’t need to be rebuilt for each application. MKE provides the Kubernetes foundation, with declarative fleet management through k0rdent. The AI-assisted operations we’re introducing at KubeCon helps reduce the operational work involved in keeping it healthy.
For platform teams, the value is greater capacity to build useful developer services because less engineering time is consumed by repetitive troubleshooting and infrastructure maintenance.
VMblog: Security, compliance, and governance remain top concerns, especially as AI systems introduce new supply chain and runtime risks. What’s your approach to helping organizations build secure, compliant cloud-native systems without sacrificing velocity?
Parker: Security and governance need to be part of everyday operations. If teams must assemble controls and reconstruct evidence just before an audit, they face unnecessary work and uncertainty.
MKE combines capabilities such as SELinux integration, optional FIPS 140-3 mode and identity integration through SAML and OpenID Connect. Its open-source foundation also supports air-gapped environments.
For agent operations, we add policy-based isolation, spending limits, audit logging and an emergency stop. Those controls help organizations introduce AI assistance while preserving visibility and control. They also support a more continuous approach to compliance, although each organization must still assess its own regulatory requirements.
VMblog: As we head toward 2027, what’s your unique value proposition? With dozens of vendors claiming similar AI-infrastructure capabilities, why should CTOs choose your solution?
Parker: CTOs need infrastructure they can operate confidently after deployment. That means evaluating upgrade behavior, security, operational overhead and freedom to change direction – not just the initial feature list.
Mirantis combines enterprise Kubernetes, open infrastructure and governed agent assistance. MKE provides the container platform; Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes, or MOSK, offers a
path for organizations replacing VMware-based private cloud infrastructure; and the AI-assisted operations we’re introducing at KubeCon helps teams manage operational complexity.
The common thread is customer control: open-source foundations, infrastructure choice and automation with human oversight.
VMblog: Are you launching any new products, unveiling significant features, or announcing partnerships at KubeCon NA 2026? What should attendees watch for?
Parker: Our KubeCon focus is introduction of AI-assisted operations software and enhancements to MKE.
Watch for how we’re applying agentic assistance to production Kubernetes operations, including troubleshooting, root-cause analysis and proactive remediation with governance controls. Together, these developments address a practical enterprise priority: adopting new capabilities while maintaining dependable production operations.
VMblog: Give us your executive pitch—how do you articulate ROI and business value to C-suite leaders who need to justify cloud-native and AI infrastructure investments?
Parker: We start with the costs executives already recognize: engineering time spent on repetitive operations, business exposure from service disruption, and infrastructure commitments that limit future choices.
Our approach targets those costs through more consistent lifecycle management, AI-assisted troubleshooting and open alternatives for enterprise infrastructure. MOSK also gives organizations evaluating VMware renewals a path to assess a different private cloud model.
The measures should be concrete: provisioning time, time to diagnose and resolve incidents, engineering hours spent maintaining clusters, and total infrastructure cost. Those measures connect platform investment to business outcomes.
VMblog: Are you organizing any exclusive customer events, partner meetings, or community gatherings during conference week in Salt Lake City? How can interested attendees connect with your team outside the booth?
Parker: We’re planning a Pre-KubeCon Customer Showcase Meetup on Monday, November 9, in Salt Lake City. The format includes a half-day hotel suite gathering for product roadmaps, technical previews and customer discovery discussions, followed by dinner and drinks with key accounts.
Interested customers should contact their Mirantis account team to discuss participation. We’ll also have technical experts available during conference week for deeper conversations about Kubernetes operations, virtualization modernization and governed agent automation.
VMblog: Looking beyond KubeCon NA 2026, what emerging trends or technologies should cloud-native practitioners be preparing for?
Parker: Practitioners should prepare for agents to become active participants in infrastructure operations. That raises new requirements around permissions, isolation, spending controls and the ability to understand – and interrupt – automated actions. And, all of that with human oversight.
They should also expect platform teams to support increasingly diverse estates spanning containers, virtual machines and GPU infrastructure. Consistent lifecycle management and open interfaces will become more valuable as that complexity grows.
Our direction is to bring those needs together: a hardened, open foundation with agent assistance that reduces operational work while keeping people accountable and in control.
VMblog: With Monday, November 9 dedicated to co-located events like Cloud Native AI + Inference Day, ArgoCon, BackstageCon, CiliumCon, and WasmCon, are you participating in any of these, and why did you choose them?
Parker: We won’t be participating in any co-located events on November 9, but we’re looking forward to connecting with attendees throughout KubeCon!
VMblog: Where exactly can attendees find you on the show floor at the Salt Palace Convention Center, and what’s the one must-see demo or experience you’ve built that showcases your technology’s real-world impact?
Parker: You can find us at Booth #232 in Hall 3 at the Salt Palace Convention Center. We’ll kick off our live demos at 12:00 PM on November 10, with more demos scheduled throughout the event. Stop by to see our technology in action!
VMblog: Walk us through your booth strategy — what interactive elements, live demonstrations, or hands-on experiences will help attendees truly understand your solution’s differentiation?
Parker: We’re bringing our technology to life with live, interactive demos across all three days of KubeCon. Attendees will get to see our solutions in action, explore real-world use cases, and engage directly with our technical experts. And to make things even more exciting, we’ll be hosting a raffle after each demo, giving attendees a chance to win a limited-edition mini cruiser skateboard or a LEGO set!
VMblog: Are you hosting any booth talks, mini-sessions, or expert Q&A opportunities? What knowledge can attendees gain without attending a formal session?
Parker: Absolutely! We have a full schedule of live demos throughout the event, giving attendees an opportunity to learn about our technology and ask questions directly to the presenters. Our technical experts will also be available at the booth throughout KubeCon for one-on-one conversations and deeper technical discussions.
VMblog: What creative approaches are you taking to stand out on a crowded show floor with 9,000+ attendees? How are you making your booth a destination rather than just a stop?
Parker: We’re creating a fun, welcoming booth experience that combines eye-catching visuals, engaging demos, and some great swag! Our booth graphics feature k0-B, our beloved mascot, alongside our manga-inspired sidekick from the From Metal-to-Model™ universe. We’re also known for our creative stickers and giveaways, so whether you’re stopping by for a demo, a technical conversation, or just to say hello, there’ll be something for everyone!
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