Hitachi Kubernetes Service Powers Cloud-Native Applications

 Hitachi Vantara, the digital infrastructure and solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced the availability of Hitachi Kubernetes Service, an enterprise-grade solution for the complex challenge of managing multiple Kubernetes environments. Hitachi Kubernetes Service enables customers to simply, consistently, and securely deploy, manage, monitor, and govern Kubernetes clusters across major cloud providers and on premises. This empowers developers to deploy workloads on their platform of choice, and eliminates vendor lock-in. The Hitachi Kubernetes Service is available today on AWS, with Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure available early in 2021.

Containers are being adopted faster and more comprehensively than previously anticipated. The containerization of applications enables them to be deployed and run easily across different computing environments, providing substantial infrastructure cost savings. Gartner expects that by 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production.1 Kubernetes is an emerging technology standard for creating, managing, and orchestrating containers and the new Hitachi Kubernetes Service brings Hitachi's technology leadership, expertise in the enterprise, and renowned global training and support to this sector.

"We have many isolated Kubernetes deployments in various clouds – it's complex and hard to manage," said Rob Teel, chief information officer for Aether Innovative Technologies, Inc. "The Hitachi Kubernetes Service provides an intuitive, multicloud dashboard with powerful APIs to manage our K8s cluster lifecycles, regardless of operating environment. Hitachi simplifies how we use and consume IT-delivered container services, whether these are delivered from on-premises or even from hybrid environments."

Accelerate Adoption of Cloud Native Infrastructure

Hitachi Kubernetes Service helps organizations accelerate the adoption of cloud-native applications by streamlining the management of the underlying infrastructure and Kubernetes cluster deployments. It also significantly simplifies how developers will use and consume IT-delivered container services whether these are delivered from on-premises or hybrid environments. The extensible self-service catalogue allows customers to optimize their experience by customizing it to match their business requirements and rapidly deploy curated applications across a hybrid Kubernetes landscape. Hitachi Kubernetes Service provides enterprise-grade security with secure communications between the Kubernetes clusters and the SaaS management plane in the cloud. Key benefits are:

- Simplicity and ease of deployment through a single management pane that deploys, manages and governs across all of a customer's private, hybrid and multicloud implementations to reduce risk and complexity

• - A unified dashboard that enables efficient management and governance of multiple on-premises or the cloud-based Kubernetes clusters and the large number of resources across them
• - Centralized monitoring and alerting that operators can use to solve Kubernetes root-cause analysis challenges to lower the mean time to respond and recover to achieve service level objectives
• - Pre-populated applications in the robust service catalog to help developers start rapidly, using the latest Kubernetes-based orchestration and container services

Comprehensive Kubernetes Training and Global Support

One key concern in DevOps is the lack of trained and experienced personnel. Hitachi Vantara offers extensive customer training including 10 foundational courses ranging from DevOps essentials to certification-level training courses to help customers build necessary skills. Additionally, the entire Hitachi Kubernetes Service is a managed SaaS environment supported by Hitachi Vantara's Global Customer Service organization.

"From skills shortages to code abandonment, consistent processes and even training and support, there are many challenges in deploying and managing enterprise-grade Kubernetes in one or more clouds," said Scott Sinclair, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). "While there are many Kubernetes services on the market, Hitachi Vantara offers an open and simple environment helping enterprises achieve success in cloud-native computing."