AWS has made its support for Kubernetes official by joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), a group whose aim is to simplify software development by creating containerized applications. 

These allow developers to access an isolated software environment in which workloads can be managed between multiple cloud platforms.

Kubernetes, the open source container management tool developed in large part by Google is by far the most successful, with 71 percent of businesses using the container management software (although sometimes combining it with others, such as Docker) according to a 451 Research study published earlier this year. 

Join the party 

Other cloud providers in the foundation include Azure, who joined two weeks ago, as well as Google Cloud Platform, IBM Bluemix, and Alibaba Cloud.

Adrian Cockcroft, vice president of cloud architecture strategy at AWS, will become a member of the governing board of the CNCF. 

AWS is the last major cloud provider to endorse the foundation but Cockcroft says it is “excited” to do so “to ensure that customers continue to have a great experience running these workloads on AWS.”

Last month, it came to light that the company was considering developing its own container orchestration system based on Kubernetes, despite it already having its own - Amazon EC2 - and the fact that Google still writes a vast majority of Kubernetes’ code.

Dan Kohn, the CNCF’s executive director, said in a statement: “As the largest cloud provider, AWS brings years of experience in enabling enterprises to successfully adopt cloud computing and enormous expertise in cloud native technologies.

”Virtualization was the biggest trend in enterprise computing over the last decade. The age of virtualization is now ending and the cloud-native era has begun, with an open sources software stack enabling portability between public, private and hybrid clouds. With the addition of AWS today, all the major cloud vendors are working together supporting open-source development of cloud-native technologies, with Kubernetes a primary focus of their collaboration.”

He added: “We believe AWS’ participation will help shape the future of enterprise computing.”