DigitalOcean Inc. unveiled a new Kubernetes service at KubeCon Europe today that’s intended to make it easier for companies to run software containers on its cloud platform.

The move to add support for the Google Inc.-developed open-source technology may help the provider level the playing field against its bigger rivals. Amazon Web Services Inc. already has a managed Kubernetes service, as does Microsoft Corp.’s rival Azure platform. And Google naturally offers its own managed flavor of the framework as well.

Kubernetes is the most widely used system for managing software containers, which have become a popular way of deploying applications among enterprises. The technology allows for software to be packaged into neat modules that are both lightweight and platform-independent, which makes it possible to move them easily across different kinds of environments.

DigitalOcean’s new Kubernetes service tackles one of the main stumbling blocks for companies looking to adopt the technology: complexity. Nearly 40 percent of the respondents to a 2017 survey by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation listed complexity as a challenge.

The new offering removes the need to set up a Kubernetes cluster manually by providing out-of-the-box integrations with the core services in DigitalOcean’s cloud. It’s hooked up to the provider’s block and object storage services, as well as its security tools. Among them is the firewall that DigitalOcean launched last year to help customers filter traffic to their environments.

Also included in the package is a more specialized security scanner that can automatically look for weak points in a company’s deployment. In the access control department, DigitalOcean also provides a tool for managing who can do what in an environment.

After the initial setup is done, a company may customize its Kubernetes cluster by adding outside services. DigitalOcean provides integration with several popular tools for implementing continuous delivery pipelines, one of the main ways companies are taking advantage of software containers’ flexibility. Continuous delivery allows development teams to push their code to production quickly with the help of automated quality assurance tests, which are faster and consume far fewer person-hours than traditional manual approaches.

DigitalOcean’s Kubernetes service is slated to begin rolling out under an early access program in June. The company expects to release it into general availability sometime later in the year.

Image: DigitalOcean