Life before Kubernetes was tough. Docker was doing its part, but containers were still too complex for everyone to handle manually. That is why, over the years, Kubernetes management has grown a market for itself, where experts help businesses manage containers and open them up to trends like DevOps, multi-cloud, AI/ML, and more. The happenings in the Kubernetes vendor market can greatly impact business decision-making across industries. That is why vendors make strategic acquisitions to enhance their Kubernetes offerings for more complex workloads, more cost-optimized services, and more reliable performance in the market. In this blog post, we will discuss 4 major acquisitions that happened this year and will likely set the stage for more nuanced Kubernetes offerings in the near and distant future.
Some of these acquisitions promise better multi-cloud capabilities, while others bring more AI-friendly offerings. One common theme is a complete upheaval in the Kubernetes landscape as we know it.
1. Cisco acquires Isovalent
Cisco marked the completion of this acquisition with a press release in April 2024. The article also discussed Cisco’s commitment to extend its support for Isovalent products and offerings, including Tetragon and Cilium. Here’s how this will have a profound impact on the Kubernetes vendors landscape:
Kubernetes Networking: Isovalent’s Cillium is an important name in cloud-native, especially regarding Kubernetes networking. The solution helps secure the connection between pods and containers using capabilities like encryption, micro-segmentation, flow logs, and more. This will enable Cisco to offer better observability and compliance management for Kubernetes networking, even in complex environments like multi-cloud.
eBPF: Isovalent also reinforces its Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) capabilities through its products like Tetragon. With eBPF-powered Kubernetes monitoring, Cisco can extend its Kubernetes management for more context-aware, secure, and observable runtime.
Cisco IKS: Cisco’s own Kubernetes management solution, Intersight Kubernetes Service (IKS), is already capable of hybrid cloud support, multiple cluster management, RBAC security, and more. Adding Isovalent’s offerings to the mix will make the solution more competitive, with extended support for multi-cloud, zero-trust networking, runtime policy enforcement, and more.
2. IBM acquires Kubecost and Harshicorp
In 2024, IBM made two great acquisitions for its Kubernetes experience. We first heard about Hashicorp in April. Later in September, the company brought out the Kubecost news. Both of these additions promise massive transformations in the company's Kubernetes offerings. Here’s how:
Hashicorp: The $6.4 billion enterprise value acquisition greatly benefits IBM’s Kubernetes experience. As we all know, IBM had already acquired Red Hat in 2019. This means that bringing Hashicorp into the fold will mean that Hashicorp’s Terraform and Red Hat’s Ansible are coming together. This will be a powerful collaboration for IBM’s K8s offerings, making the infrastructure configuration and deployment capabilities more scalable, AI-friendly, and secure. These tools also are essentially the industry standards for managing complex environments that Kubernetes services are sought after
Kubecost: Kubecost brings more to the equation about cost optimization and resource handling in Kubernetes. The acquisition will empower IBM for real-time cost management and financial insights regarding K8s. With Kubecost and Hashicorp combined with IBM's cloud Kubernetes services, IBM will surely emerge as a much more powerful name in the Kubernetes vendors market than it already is.
3. Outscale acquires Satelliz
Outscale (a Dassault Systèmes brand) has made quite a name with its cloud offerings and Kubernetes as a Service. The company announced its strategic acquisition of Satelliz in April 2024. The companies coming together will have many impacts on the Kubernetes vendor market:
Better Kubernetes Experience: Outscale Kubernetes as a Service (OKS) is already a reliable name in the Kubernetes market thanks to its secure and simplified Kubernetes management. Bringing Satelliz into the fold with its offerings in multi-cloud administration, tailored cloud monitoring, and Kubernetes security will make OKS more resourceful regarding scalability, availability, and security.
Distributed Architectures: Almost a year ago, Gartner suggested that about half of the applications critical to business processes would be stationed outside the centralized public cloud by 2027. This sets up the market for dealing with distributed architectures, and Satteliz’ss multi-cloud expertise can greatly help. With Satteliz under its aegis, Outscale can ensure secure Kubernetes services across disparate environments.
4. NVIDIA acquires Run:ai
Of course, NVIDIA is not a traditional Kubernetes vendor like the other names on the list. However, its Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) have been helping Kubernetes environments, especially with complex workloads like AI/ML. NVIDIA's recent acquisition of the Israeli company Run:ai, in April 2024 is going to enhance its offerings for the Kubernetes market further.
Enhanced GPU offerings: Run:ai has established itself in the Kubernetes-based workload management software market. It offers GPU pooling and fractioning to help NVIDIA’s GPUs manage complex AI workloads and LLMs. Therefore, NVIDIA will be a more reliable name for resource-optimized Kubernetes management.
Kubernetes and AI: With the increasing appeal for AI integration in most of the latest software innovations, Kubernetes container orchestration needs to gear up. With Runi:ai’s additional resource optimization, workload scheduling, and cluster management capabilities, NVIDIA can encourage more Kubernetes vendors to use its GPUs for accelerated AI workloads.
Conclusion
Since its inception in 2014, Kubernetes has consistently evolved to help businesses better handle their digital ecosystems. Mergers and acquisitions, as discussed above, bring more possibilities for this evolution as major industry names combine their capabilities and experiences. Business leaders can now look at these acquisitions and make more informed decisions on which Kubernetes vendor they prefer for their digital innovations.
