Since its release, Kubernetes has become recognized for its ability to revolutionize the way companies of all sizes do business. According to Red Hat’s State of Enterprise Open Source 2022 report, 70% of IT leaders have implemented Kubernetes in their organizations. Kubernetes is gaining momentum as one of the most significant enterprise technology today. This current growth is primarily due to the rapid adoption of the open-source platform. As more startups emerge with their various Kubernetes offerings, large players have started to take notice. By 2027, Gartner predicts that more than 50% of businesses globally will adopt industry cloud platforms to improve their business initiatives. In 2023, more companies will shift to multi-cloud while leveraging container orchestration.
Thanks to recent developments, there have been several acquisitions across the spectrum in the last two years. Although K8 has been around for less than a decade, it has become an integral cog in the tech ecosystem, with more and more users looking to adopt and train in this space. The idea is simple – instead of competing with these startups, major corporations have gone on a buying spree that allows them to leverage new technology to bring more customers and expand their current product offering, thus creating a better product and service. In the year 2022, four major Kubernetes acquisitions took place. Read to know more about them.
1. Mirantis acquired amazee.io to help accelerate its product roadmap (July 2022)
In late July 2022, Mirantis acquired amazee.io, including its products, IP, technology, and partner and customer relationships. A global web application delivery company for Kubernetes, amazee.io is the only ZeroOps application delivery hub built to liberate developers from cloud migrations, deployment, and operations work. Founded in 2017, amazee.io is instrumental in improving the developer experience with its fully automated application and infrastructure operations and integration tasks for application builders. Mirantis’s decision is based on the fact that the technology has the ability to fit into their Kubernetes and Lens platform. This allows the platform to boost developer productivity across all cloud technology, with 650,000 Lens users immediately using it.
2. Kubeshop acquired a stake in Kubernetes ChatOps product BotKube (July 2022)
InfraCloud Technologies focuses on products, services, and solutions to modernize applications and infrastructure. In July 2022, Kubeshop acquired a majority stake in the open-source Kubernetes ChatOps product BotKube developed by InfraCloud. Built by a Kubernetes-focused B2B Open Source Cloud Native Computing company, BotKube is famous for its ability to monitor Kubernetes clusters and interactive debugging. This majority stake is testimony to InfraCloud’s strategy and expertise in cloud-native technologies. InfraCloud is uniquely positioned to be a significant player in the Kubernetes ecosystem because of its deep expertise in Kubernetes and its culture of innovation. In the last two years, InfraCloud has grown exponentially and has invested in various Open Source products that cater to cloud adoption. The purchasing company, Kubeshop, is a Kubernetes accelerator building tool for developers in the cloud-native space.
3. Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware for $61B (May 2022)
The global technology conglomerate Broadcom recently acquired VMware for USD 61 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. In November 2022, VMware shareholders voted to approve the pending merger with Broadcom, cementing a critical step in bringing the deal closer to completion. Founded in 1998, VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services. Being one of the most prominent players in the cloud space, Broadcom supplies electronic components to Amazon’s AWS and Google’s cloud. Customers will benefit from this acquisition as the companies together will offer critical infrastructure solutions that focus on innovation and IT infrastructure needs. By bringing the Broadcom Software portfolio with the VMware platform, customers across multiple verticals can build, manage, run, connect, and protect their applications at scale across environments.
4. Rakuten Symphony acquires Kubernetes platform robin.io (Feb 2022)
Japan’s Rakuten Group, Rakuten Symphony, acquired Robin.io in February 2022. However, the details of the acquisition were not disclosed. The purchase is based on Robin.io’s technology innovations that now have the power to cater to a larger audience and lead the vision for cloud-native transformation for the industry. Founded in 2013, Robin.io is a Silicon Valley startup that offers a Kubernetes platform optimized for storage and complex network applications. The company’s hyper-converged Kubernetes for Stateful Edge automates the deployment of complex 5G, edge, and enterprise apps to improve productivity and reduce cost. Over the years, Robin.io expanded beyond the scope of storage facility to offer a more full-featured Kubernetes platform. Robin.io has 70 patents and caters to various Fortune 1000 enterprises globally. With Robin.io’s portfolio for cloud-native deployment, lifecycle management, and orchestration, Rakuten Symphony can deploy highly reliable, flexible, scalable, secure, and resilient mobile networks built on the principles of open interfaces, virtualization, and interoperability. The merger will be the beginning of new industry-leading solutions in data management, enterprise applications, cloud, and virtualization.
Future of Kubernetes
The Kubernetes ecosystem is huge and will continue to grow. While Kubernetes is popular, it is yet to become universal. It requires changes and adaption that are expected to take time. According to a recent report, the number of companies that have adopted Kubernetes clusters has almost doubled in the last year. As more companies explore the Kubernetes ecosystem, it is evident that K8 is here to stay for a long time. Conversely, companies investing in Kubernetes will likely witness transformative growth over the next few years while others play catch up.
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