From overseas to China, rancher wants to do research on container cloud market

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research | Li Zhe Zhang Hongxiang

writing | Wei Bole

Abstract ： Having a strong technical ability Rancher, Positioning in the enterprise level container cloud platform product supplier , Developed open source enterprise level Kubernetes Management platform , So as to help enterprises quickly implement container technology .

In the past decade , Thanks to AWS For the development of public cloud vendors ,IT The underlying resources are expanding rapidly , Whether it's calculation 、 Storage or network capabilities , They've all been promoted unprecedentedly .

And after the full development of the resource layer , The problems of the R & D level are becoming increasingly prominent . Lack of R & D and operation and maintenance capabilities of enterprises , It provides opportunities for the development of container cloud manufacturers , They provide a container cloud management platform for enterprises , Help businesses be more reliable 、 Secure and efficient deployment and operation of various applications .

As early as 2008 year AWS When it just started ,Rancher cofounder &CEO Liang Sheng set up http://Cloud.com The team , Open source cloud computing management software has been launched CloudStack.

2011 year ,http://Cloud.com By Citrix With 2 US $100 million acquisition , Liang Sheng was appointed Citrix Cloud platform CTO, Become Citrix The first Chinese CTO.2014 year , Liang Sheng once again led the team to start a new journey of container cloud market , Years of R & D experience and entrepreneurial experience are obviously Rancher The rapid rise provides strong support .

stay 2014 Year to 2019 Year of 5 years , Well skilled Rancher rapid growth , Now the business has expanded from the United States to China 、 European countries 、 Australia 、 Canada 、 Japan 、 South America 、 Middle East and other countries and regions .

Fully open source , Full release support Kubernetes colony

Liang Sheng thinks that ,Rancher As a startup , Be unique in terms of products , Thus, added value is generated , Not copy Redhat Such as the product model of solution suppliers .

Based on this ,Rancher Around container technology , A number of 100% Open source products , Among them, enterprise level Kubernetes Management platform Rancher It's the core product .

Enterprise class Kubernetes Management platform Rancher It can help the container to deploy in the enterprise environment , And provide all kinds of container management tools , Implement a unified security policy , And has a simple and intuitive interface style and operation experience .

meanwhile ,Rancher It also provides a directory of enterprise application services 、 Real time monitoring and alarm 、 Logs and CI/CD Pipeline And a series of expanding functions , For enterprises to land in the production environment Kubernetes Provide a more convenient way .

Rancher It is the first and only one in the industry that can manage all the clouds 、 All distributions 、 all Kubernetes Cluster platform , except Rancher Its own container engine RKE Outside , It also provides cloud container services for Google （GKE）、 Amazon cloud container service （EKS）、 Microsoft cloud container service （AKS）、 Hua Wei Yun Container engine （CCE）、 Alibaba cloud Container services （ACK） and Tencent cloud Container services （TKE） All the leading cloud providers Kubernetes Cluster support , Ensure the security and consistent experience of users using various cloud container engines .

It is worth mentioning that , This year's 2 month ,Rancher Announced lightweight Kubernetes Distribution version K3S, Designed to run in resource constrained environments Kubernetes R & D and operation and maintenance personnel design , Meet the requirements of running in the edge computing environment x86、ARM64 and ARMv7 Small on the processor 、 manageable Kubernetes The growing demand for clusters .

besides , Take the container as the core ,Rancher Also launched based on Linux The minimalist container operating system Rancher OS、 The industry's first Kubernetes operating system K3OS、 Distributed block storage based on cloud and container deployment Longhorn And support multiple Kubernetes Cross cluster network connection products between clusters Submariner.

In terms of fees ,Rancher All products follow Apache Open source protocol is completely open source , For hope from Rancher Users who officially receive enterprise level technical support ,Rancher According to the scale of container service nodes deployed by the enterprise, the subscription fee of technical support is charged annually .

From bottom to top , Enter enterprise users through developers

From well-known evaluation agencies Forrester released 《The Forrester New Wave: Enterprise Container Platform Software
Suites, Q4 2018》 Look at , Enterprise container platform （ECP） The top eight leading enterprise container platform providers in the market rank in the following order Docker,Red Hat,Rancher
Labs,Pivotal,Mesosphere,IBM,SUSE,Platform 9.

Docker Since the birth of 2013 year , As a phenomenal lightweight container technology , It almost shakes the position of virtualization technology . However , With Kubernetes The rise of ,Docker To a certain extent .

At the market level , More than half of the enterprises have started to use Kubernetes, But most of these companies only put their 1-2% Application deployment in Kubernetes On . At this stage , Kubernetes The technology is relatively mature , Except in part Windows The application is more difficult to containerize , Most applications can be containerized .

According to co founders &CEO Liang Sheng predicted that ,2023 About years ago , Companies will choose to 10% Application deployment in Kubernetes On .

And in the process , The ability to acquire customers is obviously the key to the competition among container cloud manufacturers . For now ,Rancher Our opponents are mainly Red Hat and Pivotal.

among ,Red Hat Is an open source solution provider . be based on Red Hat Of Linux The distribution already has a large enterprise customer base , So it can be carried out more conveniently OpenShift Subscription services for .

and “ Rich second generation ”Pivotal, It focuses on digital transformation , While providing the product platform for users , It also provides digital transformation methodology for customers , Help customers implement their PaaS platform , Improve the ability to get customers .

contrast Red Hat And Pivotal ,Rancher choice 100% Open source routes , Spread through users of the open source community , Increase the number of users through easy-to-use products and transform some customers into paying customers .

The specific performance is that although the clients of container cloud manufacturers are mostly enterprise users , But enterprise users are still essentially developers ,Rancher Get a large number of developer users through the open source community , And then reach enterprise users .

Excellent technical ability , Easy to use for customers 、 Security Cloud container engine

Besides , because Kubernetes The technology itself is more difficult , Enterprise R & D personnel have certain difficulties in learning and application . If container cloud manufacturers want to serve enterprise users well , They need to have strong technical ability , On the basis of understanding the threshold of customer use , Improve product usability through technical means .

and Rancher The core team has many years of experience in technology research and development , Obviously it has an advantage in technology .

among ,Rancher Co founder Liang Sheng obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees from CUHK , And got a doctorate in computer science from Yale University , yes Java Of J2SE Core components JNI The author of , Led by Zeng, he designed Java At the core of JVM virtual machine .

chief architect Darren Shepherd It's global Docker Top four contributors to core code contribution , Be selected as Docker Advisory governance committees （DGAB） Global members .

Vice president of Engineering Will Chan A former Citrix
System CloudPlatforms The engineering director of the group , Have more than 15 Experience in building large scale scalable software for large enterprises and telecom companies .

With years of experience in technology and service ,Rancher Choose for all kinds of Kubernetes Cluster for integration , Provide... To corporate customers Kubernetes Release , Greatly reduced the user's use threshold . at present ,Rancher Of Kubernetes Release RKE It has become the largest user of Kubernetes One of the releases .

at present ,Rancher It mainly serves finance 、 Internet 、 Technology 、 Manufacturing and other industry customers , Currently owned 300 More than users of paying enterprises , Including China Life 、 Huawei 、 China safe 、 Minsheng Bank 、 Societe generale 、 Shanghai automotive industry corporation 、 haier 、 Michelin 、 Trina Solar 、 Toyota 、 Honda 、 Honeywell 、 Golden wind technology and other well-known enterprises .

In recent days, , Love to analyze Rancher cofounder &CEO Liang Sheng had an interview , Yes Rancher The business model of 、 We had in-depth exchanges on future strategies , Now share some of the content for the readers .

Container technology still needs to lower the threshold of use

Love analysis ：Rancher Container cloud management platform of , What needs can we meet ？

Liang Sheng ： The core will still be on the creation of product functionality , This is also the core requirement of developers and users . for example , stay Kubernetes When it appears ,DevOps There is a new demand for related products , Need to do a lot of integration of third-party tools , So as to improve DevOps Team experience .

in addition ,Rancher Will still be customer-oriented , For example Kubernetes Cluster related resource consumption and cost management .

meanwhile , We think IT The Department is very concerned about product safety , So we will focus more on product safety optimization .

Love analysis ： Containers Kubernetes As the underlying infrastructure , Whether it will be divided into private cloud version and public cloud version ？

Liang Sheng ： Can't , Container technology itself is highly adaptable to cloud resources , On the private cloud Kubernetes And public cloud Kubernetes There's no big difference in itself , So there will be no obvious division in the future .

Love analysis ： What are the landing scenarios of container cloud technology ？

Liang Sheng ： The main application scenario is to manage the containers put into production , Many enterprises began to apply containerization , We will consider unified management of various applications , Now Rancher Can play a great value .

At this stage , The problem of containerization is mainly focused on Windows In the environment , because Windows Containerization is not good , Some applications can't be containerized , and Linux The application under the environment can be well supported . Of course , With Rancher And so on , The container has become IT The basic technology of the field , The barriers to use are also falling , In the future, application containerization should be the general trend .

Love analysis ： You judge , What are the core challenges faced by enterprises in the process of applying container technology ？

Liang Sheng ： The main difficulty is Kubernetes There is still a certain threshold , In the process of using, developers need to be aware of Kubernetes Have a certain understanding of ,Rancher Also considering how to lower the threshold of its use , Improve ease of use of containers .

Containers are tools , Weak industry attribute

Love analysis ： What system is most suitable for container underlying storage ？

Liang Sheng ： The container should use a file system , But file systems can be placed on top of block storage . And the blocks under the container store 、 File systems can be , If there is a file system, it can be used directly , Put a file system in block storage .

We can also see the difference between what we do and other companies , Some companies do software definition storage , But it's just putting the industry's Ceph Let's wait for the technology to be commercialized , They launched their own products .

actually ,Ceph Although it's really a great technology , But for containers ,Ceph It's more than ten years old , There are some problems , There's no way to solve a lot of container requirements , So we chose to start all over again , That's what we developed Longhorn.

Love analysis ： You judge , Container technology should be positioned in PaaS Tier? ？

Liang Sheng ： I think of container clouds as PaaS Part of , But in fact ,PaaS The related products have not been very successful in recent years , such as Docker、OpenShift It used to be made PaaS, But they didn't succeed , Instead, it's updating to Kubernetes After that, it succeeded a lot .

therefore , I think the container is in PaaS On the platform , But it should be understood as a new generation PaaS platform , But this PaaS What should be included in the platform , There is no consensus among different industries .

We have no publicity Rancher Namely PaaS, A big part of the reason is PaaS Platforms don't respond well in the market , because PaaS The traditional sales route of the product will say PaaS It's a big and comprehensive platform , The function is all ready , It can solve most of the problems , But in fact, it is very difficult for enterprises to effectively use .

about Rancher Come on , Our point of view is Rancher It's a tool , And it's a 100% open source tool , Developers through Rancher This tool builds the ideal program , When you need production, you will naturally come to us for technical support .

In our view ,Kubernetes It's the underlying tool , But you have to be able to manage the top applications , For example, managing deployment 、 Manage mirrors 、 Management directory 、 Management Certification 、 Managing security and so on , Container platform needs to have the function of integrated platform , It's like an operating system , Very functional .

such as Windows, After years of accumulation, the function is becoming stronger and stronger , Including many third-party tools in the industry , To help users solve their needs , Only in this way can we serve users well and accumulate users . We think , The success of the platform is judged by the number of users , This is also Rancher The reason to focus on this .

Love analysis ： You judge , Whether container technology has strong vertical properties ？

Liang Sheng ： The container industry is actually relatively horizontal , Not too vertical , But it's true that the adoption of containers by different industries varies greatly , It is generally believed that the Internet is the most adopted 、SaaS company , To finance 、 Technology companies , Then to the traditional manufacturing industry 、 Retail, etc .

But in fact ,Rancher There are also many customers in the manufacturing and retail industries , So we judge that containers are more focused on platform level technology , Just like cloud services , It doesn't have very strong vertical properties .

Love analysis ： future ,Kubernetes Is every component of the can be productized ？

Liang Sheng ： Theoretically speaking , It can be produced . But generally speaking , Foreign customers prefer standard products , In this way, the product can be more compatible with AWS、Azure、 Alibaba cloud Wait for the public cloud , But there are also some domestic users who want to do some customization , This can also be achieved .

Container penetration is still low , Productization is the right way of vicissitudes

Love analysis ：Rancher Is there a big difference between the customers in China and those in the United States ？

Liang Sheng ： Yes , The technical ability of American customers is relatively strong , Yes Rancher The product is more powerful , In addition to Huawei, Chinese customers are strong IT The guest of ability , A lot of the rest are still in the trial stage .

Love analysis ： At this stage ,Rancher What channel partners are there ？

Liang Sheng ： It's still in the early days of marketing , Our channel partners are mainly SRI、 Agile companies like hosting . These enterprises in the cloud help 、 When it comes to digital transformation , Will Rancher Recommended to customers as a development tool .

Rancher At present, it is a hierarchical channel partner system , The first category of distributors in China are Jiajie and digital China . Among them, Jiajie prefers to develop distribution partner ecology , Digital China focuses on customer development in key industries .

The second category is industry ISV Application solutions partners , Such as Shanghai digital information, which focuses on the university industry, and dace technology, which focuses on the financial industry .

The third category is integrators , We are 2018 At the end of the year, we will connect with other Kunlun 、 Yuanding Technology 、 The letter is also Hongda, etc 10 Our partners operate in China as platinum and gold partners respectively .

Love analysis ： You judge , future CMP Will manufacturers become Rancher And the competitors of container cloud manufacturers ？

Liang Sheng ： At this stage ,CMP There is no competition between vendors and container cloud vendors , There is no cross between businesses , And their technical capabilities are limited . however CMP The business is not very successful at the moment , The core reason is that the business scope is too narrow , There are big differences between different public clouds , While using CMP After the product , Some native cloud features are not available , It's also a lot of customers don't want to use CMP Why .

By contrast ,Rancher The bottom is all based on Kubernetes Of , It is significantly better than CMP, Better user experience .

Love analysis ： You judge , What is the penetration rate of container cloud market at present ？

Liang Sheng ： The permeability is very low at this stage , Most companies are right about Kubernetes The ability of application is still insufficient , According to our feedback from the client , Permeability is likely to be in 1-2% This magnitude , So there is still a lot of room for improvement in the future market , and Rancher Also will try to reduce the threshold of product use .

Love analysis ： You judge , What are the major development trends of the container industry ？

Liang Sheng ： I think the biggest trend in the container industry right now is to optimize the developer experience , How to help developers move more applications to Kubernetes The above to . in addition , Will be Kubernetes This platform level technology is applied to a wider range of scenarios .

Love analysis ： Some domestic container cloud manufacturers choose customized routes to serve customers , What do you think of this phenomenon ？

Liang Sheng ： Productization is actually a business of bitterness before sweetness , It's very difficult at the beginning of development , Enterprises need to have a unique core foundation , To be able to stick to it . Special , The Chinese market itself is relatively small , The competition is also relatively fierce , It puts a lot of pressure on startups , Choosing to be customized is also a rational choice .

therefore , Most of the domestic container manufacturers and Rancher There are great differences in nature , They're more like outsourcing companies , The business is selling R & D capabilities, not software .

But if we all choose the idea of software outsourcing , The market will be very competitive , The service price will be very low . A well-known enterprise found Rancher, hope Rancher Can provide customized services for it , And pay per person per day , But from the perspective of paying cognition and paying ability , Customers are only willing to provide 800 element / people / Sky price , This is very difficult for container cloud vendors to pay business costs themselves . therefore , In the long term , Making products is the best way .