proof of concept for alpha release

Pivotal wants to lower Kubernetes’ learning curve with the alpha release of Pivotal Application Service (PAS). PAS is a modern runtime for Java, .NET and Node apps, powered by Kubernetes. While the solution is built for developers, it is also made to help operation teams improve uptime.

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According to the company, while Kubernetes is becoming a significant part of cloud infrastructure, many organizations are struggling with the complexity.

“Today’s announcements have been a long time in the making, and are the natural next step in our platform’s evolution. We helped start the Kubo open-source project in 2017, and launched the Pivotal Container Service with VMware last year, which is already being used by over 140 organizations,” said Rob Mee, CEO of Pivotal. “This announcement marks the next leap forward of our platform’s capabilities, and will help organizations achieve meaningful business outcomes on top of Kubernetes.”

PAS brings the “cf push” experience to the container orchestration solution, enabling developers to focus more on the code while the platform takes care of components, networking, monitoring and logging, according to the company. The release also features app instances running as Kubernetes pods, HTTP routing to app instances, log streams from app instances and scaling to at least 50 app instances.

In addition, Pivotal announced the alpha version of Pivotal Build Service, an automation solution that creates container images for developers while providing audit and security controls for enterprises. Build Service is part of the company’s Kubernetes strategy. Pivotal also released the Pivotal Spring Runtime and Pivotal Service Mesh. The service mesh takes care of the setup and configuration of Istio while Spring Runtime provides support for Java.

Pivotal also released RibbitMQ on Kubernetes, an automation tool for the deployment and operations of RabbitMQ.

“Kubernetes is a runaway train right now, and organizations are struggling to keep deployments and management on track. They want to standardize processes, tools, and people, but face a fragmented, complex, and rapidly changing environment,” said James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk. “Pivotal has a history of standardizing and documenting cloud-native tools and methods, and is now applying that experience to Kubernetes and associated technology—like Istio. It is finessing the industry shift to Kubernetes by taking management features from the Pivotal Application Service, and re-applying them.”

Going forward, the company will work to support more clouds, ensure app uptime during platform upgrades, observability and deployment alongside PAS.