Why Every Company Needs a Kubernetes Strategy

Speaker: Dave Bartoletti, Outbound Product Manager, Google Cloud

Dave Bartoletti: Why is Kubernetes all the rage? It's three reasons: it's solid, it's stable and it's proven its scale, it's incredibly flexible, but it can also just work so you can tinker with it for whatever app modernization challenge you have or you can just use GKE and let us make some smart choices for you and just run your apps with Kubernetes. Second, there's a huge community of incredibly smart people working on it and I don't just mean vendors - every week, another bank or major retailer or Telco announces some amazing new customer experience. They were able to deliver at scale on Kubernetes. And finally, it's open source. So that means this vibrant community comes from all walks of life, from the crankiest old technologist to the youngest developer with an incredible idea for an incredible application and that means portable too. So you can take Kubernetes everywhere from the cloud to the edge.

Dave Bartoletti: Yes, I think every company does need a Kubernetes strategy, just like every company needs a data strategy, an application strategy and a security strategy. Kubernetes is really the new infrastructure as a service. It's that foundational and it's already at the heart of every modern application platform, from the cloud to the data center. It's really this new fundamental platform element that's going to power applications for the next decade, at least long after I'm gone. Whether you're creating a new web or mobile app or your reimagining a retail store or you're running massive machine learning jobs, Kubernetes is going to be under the covers, delivering the infrastructure and the services that you need anywhere. It's become a new fundamental layer in the modern technology stack.

Dave Bartoletti: First of all, don't go it alone, join the community, spin up a free tier cluster in GKE. Configure it to be stable and secure with GKE autopilot, then set up your projects and set your development team free. I'd say. The best first question to ask yourself is how can I create a friction free developer experience? How can I let my first team go from zero to hero on Kubernetes as quickly as possible, whether that's with GKE on Google Cloud, with Anthos in your data center or even at the edge, pick a very important app that needs to get better now and make sure you start one that has a direct impact on customer experience, Migrate that to Kubernetes first then give us a call. We want to know what you're solving for.