At Cloud Foundry Summit last week in The Hague, IBM announced that it can run Cloud Foundry (CF) containers on Red Hat OpenShift with Kubernetes. The new compatibility means that Cloud Foundry containers can be used and managed like other OpenShift containers.
Cloud Foundry had recently lost popularity compared to Kubernetes. So, the move to merge the two platforms does not only provide extra functionality. IBM is making a good start with the announcement to gain some ground in the cloud. This way, IBM does not have to stop using Cloud Foundry. If you can’t beat K8s, join them.
On Cloud Foundry, code is automatically packaged in containers from which applications can be run. IBM has been using CF technology for a long time. With the acquisition of Red Hat (and therefore OpenShift) earlier this year, Big Blue suddenly had a competitive container platform in its hands. Now CF containers also run on Kubernetes, so this competition is no longer very problematic.
CF implementations on Kubernetes
According to The Register, Cloud Foundry’s Eirini project has laid the foundation for the new possibilities with CF containers on Kubernetes. This project included an option to roll out on Kubernetes instead of Cloud Foundry’s Diego infrastructure. “Part of what makes this possible for us is the Eirini project that we led together with our colleagues from SAP, SUSE and Pivotal,” said Tammy van Hove, distinguished engineer at IBM.
In addition to rolling out CF containers on Kubernetes, it is also possible to integrate CF containers with applications that are already installed on OpenShift. Furthermore, a preview of Pivotal Application Service and SUSE Cloud Application Platform can now also run on OpenShift/Kubernetes.
The addition of Cloud Foundry functionality to OpenShift is a new step for IBM towards the competition. With the new Cloud Foundry features, IBM is once again making progress in order to keep Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft Azure in sight.
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