Mendix Enables Private Clouds Based on Kubernetes
Mendix today announced it will make it possible to launch a private cloud to run its namesake low-code platform on Kubernetes clusters.
Company CTO Johan den Haan says organizations that can’t make use of shared public cloud infrastructure have been turning to Kubernetes to build their own private clouds. However, it can take them as long as a year to stand up their own private cloud on a Kubernetes cluster, he says.
Mendix for Private Cloud will provide an alternative option through which IT teams will be able to build and deploy low-code applications on an instance of Kubernetes. That private cloud can be deployed on a public cloud or in a local data center. In the future, Mendix plans to extend this capability out to edge computing platforms, says den Haan.
Along with Mendix for Private Cloud, the company also announced Mendix Dedicated Cloud, which provides IT teams with a set of IT infrastructure resources that are not shared with any other organization.
Many organizations, den Haan notes, are looking to implement hybrid cloud computing strategies based on a Kubernetes foundation faster than anticipated. A recent Forrester survey finds 86% of IT organizations are making multi-cloud or hybrid cloud investments for operational efficiency. One-third of those respondents said they will use the private cloud as part of their deployment strategy, while nearly a quarter (23%) will make use of a combination of on-premises and public cloud services.
Previously, the Mendix approach to cloud computing revolved around deploying its tools on top of an instance of the Cloud Foundry platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment. However, now that the Cloud Foundry Foundation is working toward making Kubernetes the foundation on which its PaaS is deployed, it makes sense for Mendix to go ahead and deepen its support for Kubernetes, says den Haan.
Mendix also will work with organizations that have already deployed Kubernetes to migrate those clusters into a Mendix private cloud.
It’s not clear to what degree organizations will opt to rely on managed service providers (MSPs) to deploy Kubernetes versus managing it themselves. Mendix is adding a new variable to that equation because as a provider of an application development platform it is now acting as an MSP. Rather than requiring IT teams to manage separate services contracts, Mendix is essentially making a case for unifying the billing process.
Naturally, it will take a while for the hybrid cloud computing environments to fully manifest themselves. Most IT organizations will clearly make use of multiple clouds. Less clear is to what degree they will be able to unify the management of multiple clouds.
In the meantime, application development teams that have embraced containers are not likely to want to wait too long for internal IT teams to master Kubernetes. As such, the number of managed private cloud instances of Kubernetes being employed should increase substantially in the months ahead.
