At Fairwinds, our primary focus is to offer DevOps-as-a-Service (DaaS) because we have a scalable model that has proven valuable to the market. In addition to our monthly support offerings, we provide one-off Kubernetes consulting. Even our DaaS clients start off with some in-depth consulting.
Kubernetes is a fascinating space to be working in for two key reasons:
Unlike software development shops, where any app can be built in a number of different languages or frameworks, infrastructure code can be built with Kubernetes for almost any software stack. We can therefore create repeatable processes that are scalable across many different clients, from e-commerce, to payment processors, to mobile apps, etc…
Kubernetes is still very new and exciting, and there’s incredible demand in the market for it.
The first release of Kubernetes was on June 7, 2014, yet to date surprisingly few people have worked with Kubernetes, let alone in a production environment. The number of great engineers experienced in Kubernetes is substantially higher today than a year ago, but the number is still really low comparatively. Companies regularly turn to us because they have determined Kubernetes is the right tool for the job but need help implementing it in a production environment.
We have been a Kubernetes-exclusive shop for over a year now, and we have built out production-ready infrastructure for companies large and small. Our engineering team is regularly molding it to work for every size infrastructure. And while we hit bumps along the way with new and unusual setups, our clients are consistently impressed with the quality and flexibility of Kubernetes as an orchestration tool.
A little over a year ago there was market demand for Docker Swarm, Mesos and even some murmurs about Nomad. When we chose to go all-in with Kubernetes, the decision seemed a bit scary, but today the fact that we’re a Kubernetes-only shop makes perfect sense. At present, more than 1,200 contributors have made more than 50,000 commits to this groundbreaking open source project. Kubernetes brand recognition and support from Google, has strong community backing and is clearly the way the wind is blowing. Even Microsoft is getting on the Kubernetes train with their acquisition of Deis and the release of Draft.
We made the right choice at the right time. We’re thrilled to be in the space and to see Kubernetes mature as demand and adoption of this tool continue to grow.