Hitachi Vantara Skims Containership’s Kubernetes Assets

Source:-sdxcentral.com

Hitachi Vantara scooped up the debris of Containership’s disastrous Kubernetes cruise, announcing that it has acquired the assets of the failed startup for an undisclosed amount. The deal comes six months after Containership permanently docked its operations.

Bobby Soni, COO for Hitachi Vantara’s Digital Infrastructure Business Unit, explained in a blog post that the acquisition includes Containership’s “Kubernetes IP” that is based on its Kubernetes Engine. That platform is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)-certified Kubernetes distribution that supports provisioning and management of Kubernetes clusters running on major cloud providers.

“The software addresses critical cloud native application issues facing customers working with Kubernetes such as persistent storage support, centralized authentication, access control, audit logging, continuous deployment, workload portability, cost analysis, autoscaling, upgrades, and more,” Soni wrote.

Soni explained that Hitachi Vantara would integrate the Containership technology across its portfolio. The vendor currently offers infrastructure products that leverage Kuberenetes, “however, container orchestration is a rapidly evolving market and we continue to invest in solutions that help IT and DevOps teams maximize their infrastructure advantage,” he added.

The deal does not include any of Containership’s employees.

Hitachi Vantara’s Lifeline
Hitachi Vantara was formed in late 2017. That creation involved Hitachi streamlining three of its previous operations into a single unit. The new Hitachi Vantara operation took over from what were Hitachi’s Data Systems, Insight Group, and Pentaho software businesses, with a focus on data services and opportunities in the IoT space.

Soni at that time explained to Fortune that the company would not compete against established cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“This is all about standing up end-to-end solutions that can run on-premises or on Azure or Amazon,” Soni said. “Our strategy is to bring industrial IoT expertise, our software, and ability to manage and run technology. We don’t think many companies are in a position to pull all those things together.”

It’s now adding Kubernetes into that mix.

“We plan to announce more details of how we will incorporate Containership’s IP into our product roadmap in the coming months,” the company noted in a statement to SDxCentral. “We expect new offerings based on Containership IP to be highly complementary to Hitachi Enterprise Cloud.”

Containership abruptly sank last September, with its founder and CTO Norman Joyner blaming the company’s inability to adequately monetize its operations in light of Kubernetes’ rise. This included a failed attempt to pivot its Containership Cloud operations toward a more Kubernetes-focused platform.

“Ultimately, we came up short,” Joyner wrote in a blog post at that time. “It has been nearly a year and a half since the Containership Cloud re-platform, and we have failed to monetize Containership Cloud in such a way that we could build a sustainable business.”

Containership launched in early 2015, sparked by a desire to be part of the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield event. While it did not succeed in winning that competition, the company’s founders decided to make a go of it by launching its open source container scheduler.

The company managed to raise $2.6 million in seed funding and set out to help manage container deployments. It positioned itself in many ways, including as an alternative to Heroku. It also added support for other cloud players like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Packet.