Oracle, Red Hat See the Value of Kubernetes for Channel Partners

KUBECON CLOUDNATIVECON NORTH AMERICA — In just five years, the Kubernetes container orchestration platform has grown from a Google startup project into an important tool being used by more and more midsized to large businesses to automate the deployment and management of their applications using containers.

That growing popularity has also caught the attention of a wide range of major technology companies, including Oracle and Red Hat, who spoke with Channel Futures about how Kubernetes should be embraced by the channel to drive new services and revenue as customers build out their cloud computing strategies into the future.

Oracle’s Bob Quillin

“Kubernetes provides a way to build and operate a new application architecture that is standard and portable across any cloud because is standards-based and open source,” Bob Quillin, vice president of Oracle’s container group, told Channel Futures at the conference. “It allows you to have flexibility as an organization to run the stack on-premises or in the cloud or using any cloud provider, giving you flexibility combined with technical agility. This is the way that you build or run a new cloud-native application.”

Those qualities make it the de facto platform for application delivery and deployment, which has happened quickly over the last two years, he said. But with that rapid growth, there has also been a shortage of trained and qualified personnel to make the technology work for customers, he added.

That’s where channel partners need to step up to help Oracle and other vendors take Kubernetes to the next level in helping to meet customer requirements for the technology, said Quillin.

“There’s a demand and a huge amount of interest to adopt cloud technologies by organizations and they don’t know how to do it on their own,” he said. “So they’re looking for help that needs to be spread across the ecosystem of partners — from vendors and channel partners that they look to. And if they’re not going find that help with their existing channel partners, they are going to go to another one.”

Oracle’s strategy is to work to make it easier for their customers by providing Kubernetes services that are managed so customers don’t have to be experts in the technology, he said. Oracle can manage the Kubernetes projects for customers, making the technology more approachable for them.

Part of the problem for customers is that there is a very tight market for IT workers with Kubernetes skills, making it hard to take on by themselves, he said.

“We are running  Kubernetes for them, but they still have to bring their applications in and know how to do that,” said Quillin. But more channel partners are needed to help companies like Oracle get these benefits out to more potential customers, he said. “We need a broad network of partners and it takes a village to do this.”

And while many of the 12,000 attendees…