Spectro Cloud launched in March. I recently had the opportunity to speak to Tenry Fu (CEO) and Tina Nolte (VP, Products) about the launch, and what Spectro Cloud is, and thought I’d share some notes here.

The Problem?

I was going to start this article by saying that Kubernetes in the enterprise is a bin fire, but that’s too harsh (and entirely unfair on the folks who are doing it well). There is, however, a frequent compromise being made between ease of use, control, and visibility.

[image courtesy of Spectro Cloud]

According to Fu, the way that enterprises consume Kubernetes shouldn’t just be on the left or the right side of the diagram. There is a way to do both.

The Solution?

According to the team, Spectro Cloud is “a SaaS platform that gives Enterprises control over Kubernetes infrastructure stack integrations, consistently and at scale”. What does that mean though? Well, you get access to the “table stakes” SaaS management, including:

• Managed Kubernetes experience;
• Multi-cluster and environment management; and
• Enterprise features.

Profile-Based Management

You also get some cool stuff that heavily leverages profile-based management, including infrastructure stack modelling and lifecycle management that can be done based on integration policies. In short, you build cluster profiles and then apply them to your infrastructure. The cluster profile usually describes the OS flavour and version, Kubernetes version, storage configuration, networking drivers, and so on. The Pallet orchestrator then ensures these profiles are used to maintain the desired cluster state. There are also security-hardened profiles available out of the box.

If you’re a VMware-based cloud user, the appliance (deployed from an OVA file) sits in your on-premises VMware cloud environment and communicates with the Spectro Cloud SaaS offering over TLS, and the cloud properties are dynamically propagated.

Licensing

The solution is licensed on the number of worker node cores under management. This is tiered based on the number of cores and it follows a simple model: More cores and a longer commitment equals a bigger discount.

The Differentiator?

Current Kubernetes deployment options vary in their complexity and maturity. You can take the DIY path, but you might find that this option is difficult to maintain at scale. There are packaged options available, such as VMware Tanzu, but you might find that multi-cluster management is not always a focus. The managed Kubernetes option (such as those offered by Google and AWS) has its appeal to the enterprise crowd, but those offerings are normally quite restricted in terms of technology offerings and available versions.

Why does Spectro Cloud have appeal as a solution then? Because you get control over the integrations you might want to use with your infrastructure, but also get the warm and fuzzy feeling of leveraging a managed service experience.

Thoughts

I’m no great fan of complexity for complexity’s sake, particularly when it comes to enterprise IT deployments. That said, there are always reasons why things get complicated in the enterprise. Requirements come from all parts of the business, legacy applications need to be fed and watered, rules and regulations seem to be in place simply to make things difficult. Enterprise application owners crave solutions like Kubernetes because there’s some hope that they, too, can deliver modern applications if only they used some modern application deployment and management constructs. Unfortunately, Kubernetes can be a real pain in the rear to get right, particularly at scale. And if enterprise has taught us anything, it’s that most enterprise shops are struggling to do the basics well, let alone the needlessly complicated stuff.

Solutions like the one from Spectro Cloud aren’t a silver bullet for enterprise organisations looking to modernise the way applications are deployed, scaled, and managed. But something like Spectro Cloud certainly has great appeal given the inherent difficulties you’re likely to experience if you’re coming at this from a standing start. Sure, if you’re a mature Kubernetes shop, chances are slim that you really need something like this. But if you’re still new to it, or are finding that the managed offerings don’t give you the flexibility you might need, then something like Spectro Cloud could be just what you’re looking for.