Over the past few years, the use of containers in application development has been growing rapidly and in turn, vaulting Kubernetes into the de facto standard for container orchestration.
VMware PKS is a commercially supported combination of the pure, open source Kubernetes container orchestration platform and essential capabilities which solve the many pain points that enterprise customers experience when deploying Kubernetes in production.
PKS has differentiated it in a number of ways:
- Pure Kubernetes, Enterprise Ready: commercially supported Kubernetes distribution certified to CNCF standards. Ships as a fully integrated solution, including NSX-T for networking and security, Harbor for more secure container image lifecycle management and BOSH for day 1 and day 2 operations. Integration with enterprise standards such as LDAP & monitoring and VMware solutions like Wavefront, vRealize Automation, vRealize Log Insight, vSAN, as well as a broad ecosystem of 3rd party integrations.
- Multi-tenant, Multi-cluster Self Service: API driven control plane enables on-demand provisioning of templated clusters so that operations teams can efficiently manage large numbers of clusters across many tenants and varied workload demands.
- Continuously Delivered Platform: providing Day 1 and Day 2 operational automation for Kubernetes, enabling continuous updates and scaling for Kubernetes and the infrastructure that it depends upon, all with zero-downtime upgrades.
- Multi-cloud: deep integration with vSphere, complemented by full support for the public clouds of the customer’s choosing for maximum flexibility.
- Highly available, resilient platform: while Kubernetes provides high availability for containerized workloads, PKS also provides highly available infrastructure to Kubernetes across availability zones resulting in a more resilient solution with fewer outages.
To date, VMware and Pivotal teams have led the PKS sales engagement. As VMware PKS continues to gain momentum, VMware and Pivotal are looking to scale to a broader channel to effectively reach the global customer base. That is why this week we are announcing details around the VMware PKS Competency for partners to help enterprises run modern applications with flexibility and agility, as a strategic advisor, while growing business opportunities and building new practices.
VMware PKS Partner Competency
Since the PKS launch in February 2018, VMware and Pivotal have supported a channel pilot project to enable both partners and customers to gain faster access to PKS-related services and capabilities. The pilot has been providing us with an opportunity to test and validate the PKS competency.
A few of the participating partners in the pilot are attending VMworld 2018 Europe in Barcelona and will be joining us on stage as we announce the details of the upcoming PKS competency for the channel. We are excited to have them discuss their own experiences as we prepare to expand the go-to-market routes for PKS.
The PKS Competency will be designed to help VMware partners extend their infrastructure modernization practices with new Kubernetes-based solutions and revenue streams. Kubernetes is the most popular developer-ready infrastructure abstraction on which people build new applications. It will provide training and certification along with sales, services and marketing benefits so that partners can deliver higher value-added services to help enterprises run modern applications with flexibility and agility.
Partners will also be able to sell VMware solutions from the infrastructure to the developer layer, opening up new monetization opportunities and a drag sales effect from the broader portfolio of VMware and Pivotal offerings.
VMware intends to make the new PKS competency available to VMware partners in Q1 FY20. We have an enablement path in place today for partners who want to get ready. If you are a VMware partner, please contact your Partner Business Manager (PBM) to find out more details about this opportunity and stay tuned for related announcements.
If you do not have a VMware contact, please send an email and we will respond promptly. If you have access to Partner Central, you can find additional information on our VMworld Europe Partner Launch page. We will be posting additional VMware PKS competency documentation as it becomes available. You can also visit the PKS website to find out more details about this offering.
Link to Pivotal’s announcement blog.
