There are many platforms to choose from if you want to use Kubernetes, but Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced a new one that is designed for both cloud-native applications and monolithic applications with persistent storage. 

Dubbed the HPE Container Platform, HPE is promising users that they will gain access to the 100% open source version of Kubernetes. That means the company hasn’t tinkered with the container-orchestration system at all, unlike some other platforms which have added their own stuff on top. 

While the 100% open source Kubernetes will be a nice bonus for some users, the HPE Container Platform’s real star feature is the ability to run across multiple environments while retaining the single management layer. This is possible thanks to HPE’s acquisition of BlueData and MapR, which is powering the platform. 

“Application development is migrating to containers, and Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container orchestration,” said Kumar Sreekanti, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Hybrid IT at HPE. 

“We’re combining our expertise and intellectual property from recent acquisitions together with open source Kubernetes to deliver an unmatched enterprise-class container platform. Our container-first approach will provide enterprises with a faster and lower cost path to application modernization, optimised for bare-metal and extensible to any infrastructure from edge to cloud.”

According to HPE, the key benefits of the HPE Container Platform include:

• Modernises non cloud-native monolithic applications without re-architecting them, elevating the experience to modern cloud standards.
• Provides the ability to build applications once and run them anywhere, bridging the gap between on-premises, public clouds and the edge.
• Improves productivity for developers and delivers new code releases faster, with simplified Kubernetes deployment and multi-cluster management.
• Ensures enterprise-class security, performance, and reliability at a lower cost, with bare-metal containers and data persistence.

HPE Container Platform software will be orderable in early 2020 along with advisory, consulting, deployment, and support services from HPE.