The container platform is intended to provide an easier alternative to the likes of Docker, Kubernetes and Heroku.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

August 23, 2016

2 Min Read
Kontena Launches Container Platform, Banks Seed Funding

Startup Kontena has launched a container and microservices platform that, it claims, is designed to be developer friendly, easy to install and able to run at any scale -- attributes that, Kontena says, differentiate it from the current crop of container platforms.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, founded in March 2015, has also raised $2 million seed funding from Helsinki-based Lifeline Ventures. It also has a clever name: Say it out loud -- cute, huh?

According to the team at Kontena Inc. , the startup's container and microservices platform requires zero maintenance, is designed for automatic updates, and runs on any infrastructure, including on-premises, cloud and hybrid. Combined, those attributes make it an easy-to-use alternative to platforms such as Docker, Kubernetes, Heroku and Mesosphere, the company says.

"We're more targeted for developers, rather than DevOps people," Miska Kaipiainen, CEO and co-founder, tells Light Reading.

Kaipiainen says he has experience running "a huge container platform in one big enterprise." He adds, "I felt the pain where we had to spend a huge amount of time deploying the platform and maintaining the platform." Kontena is designed to spare developers that pain, he claims.

Kontena sells "with batteries included" -- built-in orchestration, scheduling, overlay networking, services and discovery, and registry for Docker images, Kaipiainen says.

Want to know more about the cloud? Visit Light Reading Enterprise Cloud.

Kontena is available as open source, with the vendor providing support, training and a hardened version with SLAs.

Ease of use is a hotspot for competition among container companies. In June, Docker Inc. came out with a new version of its namesake container management with built-in orchestration support, presenting it as an easier-to-use alternative to Kubernetes. (See Docker Targets Google Kubernetes.)

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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