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​Oracle joins the Kubernetes movement

Oracle joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and released Kubernetes on Oracle Linux and its own Kubernetes cloud installer.
Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor

Is open-source software really free?

At The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Los Angeles, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Foundation and Oracle, announced that it was joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Platinum Member. In addition, Oracle is releasing Kubernetes on Oracle Linux. With this move, as Zemlin noted "six of the largest clouds are now running Kubernetes."

Kubernetes is the industry-leading, open-source container orchestration and management platform. It's rapidly emerging as the standard for managing containerized applications. According to the analyst firm RedMonk, 71 percent of the Fortune 100 use containers, and more than 50 percent of those companies already use Kubernetes for container orchestration.

Mark Cavage, Oracle's VP of Software Development, said: "Kubernetes is the future of cloud container orchestration and management, and Oracle is committed to improving the technology to make enterprise adoption easier than ever. Oracle uses Kubernetes internally and dedicates significant engineering resources to the project. We have also recently open sourced a Kubernetes installer for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and released Kubernetes on Oracle Linux. Formally joining the CNCF signals an even deeper commitment to Kubernetes and CNCF community participation."

Oracle isn't just joining the CNCF. It's working on Kubernetes.

Deploying Kubernetes can be very hard. To address this problem, Oracle is open sourcing its automated Kubernetes Terraform template for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. For now, that will be very handy for Oracle Cloud users, but as open source it can serve as the basis for Kubernetes installers for other clouds.

Additionally, Oracle is releasing Oracle Linux Container Services for use with Kubernetes. This simplifies the configuration and setup of Kubernetes on Oracle Linux: Public cloud, private cloud, and customer on-premises. This solution has been developed as an extension to Oracle Linux and Oracle Linux Container Services for Docker, with a streamlined installation model. The plan is to enable developers to setup and deploy their orchestration environment in minutes.

"Oracle has decades of experience meeting the needs of world-class enterprises," said Chris Aniszczyk, the CNCF's COO. "We are excited to have Oracle join CNCF as a platinum member, and believe that their key role will help define the future of enterprise cloud."

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