We're excited to announce that Kubernetes Apps in the Azure Marketplace is now Generally Available. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides a robust and scalable managed Kubernetes platform for organizations running their most mission-critical applications on Azure. With Kubernetes Apps, teams can further extend the capabilities of their AKS deployments with a vibrant ecosystem of tested and transactable third-party solutions from industry-leading partners and popular open-source offerings.
Customers benefit from a simplified supply chain that offers vetted security, integrated billing, and one-click deployment to AKS, making it easier than ever to build cutting-edge solutions. Kubernetes Apps enables you to:
- Drive business efficiency with one-click deployments and CI/CD automation.
- Reduce management & operations overhead with streamlined enterprise support and automated lifecycle management.
- Use vetted and secure solutions that have gone through a rigorous certification process and are continually scanned for vulnerabilities.
- Simplify billing and consumption with flexible billing options and the ability to apply Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) to 3rd party solutions.
Get started using Kubernetes Apps today at: https://aka.ms/deployK8sApp.
Featured Kubernetes Apps Partners
We announced the public preview of the Kubernetes Apps marketplace offering in October 2022, followed by our General Availability in May 2023 with our launch partners. Since then, several customers have begun using the marketplace offerings from our partners in their Kubernetes environments. I'd like to share details of some of those partner offerings and what customers have been able to achieve:
Isovalent
AKS empowers enterprises with a highly scalable and secure platform for managing containerized applications, enabling faster development, increased agility, and improved resource utilization. However, as applications scale, there can be increased complexity around security and networking. Isovalent Cilium Enterprise, built on top of the open-source Cilium project, addresses these concerns by providing additional functionality such as advanced observability and security policy enforcement across multiple layers of the stack. It uses eBPF technology to deliver network and application-layer security, while also providing observability and tracing for Kubernetes workloads. Isovalent Cilium Enterprise also provides seamless integration with popular Kubernetes platforms and tools, including Istio, Helm, and more, thereby making it a trusted offering among organizations.
With Kubernetes Apps, customers can easily deploy and upgrade Isovalent Cilium Enterprise features to a new or existing AKS cluster (running Azure CNI powered by Cilium) with just a few clicks. Isovalent Cilium Enterprise is built with native integration with the Azure networking platform to offer advanced features and capabilities with best-in-class performance and scale.
"Adobe has used Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium in production for many years, and we were excited to learn of the enterprise features and support provided on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service. By leveraging Azure Marketplace, we can perform lifecycle management of the application with ease, gain access to integrated billing and enterprise-grade support. This helps us reduce costs and achieve efficiency" –Joseph Sandoval, Cloud Native Product Manager at Adobe.
Get started with Isovalent Cilium Enterprise on the Azure Marketplace: Cilium Enterprise by Isovalent
CAST AI
CAST AI is an AI-driven Kubernetes automation platform for AKS users looking to optimize and automatically manage their cloud resources in minutes. CAST AI combines Kubernetes monitoring and end-to-end automation, to cover AKS cloud cost monitoring, management, and optimization operations automatically, in one place.
With Kubernetes Apps, Azure users are now one click away from enabling an AI engine to help improve the efficiency of AKS clusters. CAST AI's cutting-edge machine learning algorithms continuously analyze and fine-tune the infrastructure, ensuring optimal resource utilization. After connecting an AKS cluster via the Azure Marketplace, teams will first see a cost monitoring suite – after a few minutes, the AI engine will manage the compute resources automatically via an ultra-efficient rightsizing and bin packing autoscaler and will also manage any Spot VMs.
“Our recent purchase of Cast AI has helped us optimize costs and automate AKS management, including cost reporting. Now having this available on the marketplace makes it even easier to integrate into our platform” – James O’ Hare, Principle Platform Engineer, NielsenIQ
"Azure Marketplace simplifies access to exceptional services like Cast.AI, enabling Phlexglobal to optimize our Kubernetes clusters and achieve significant cost savings. By leveraging Azure Marketplace, we streamline resource utilization, enhance performance, and maximize cost-efficiency. This seamless integration empowers Phlexglobal to unlock unparalleled value, ensuring a highly professional and budget-friendly Kubernetes experience." Alex Potter-Dixon VP, Cloud Engineering and Operations, Phlexglobal
Get started with CAST AI on the Azure Marketplace: CAST AI by CAST AI Group
Portworx by Pure Storage
Portworx enables customers to easily develop, deploy, scale, and manage their data and stateful applications in AKS. Offering dynamic provisioning, CSI-compliant volume lifecycle management, and automatic capacity planning, Portworx enables developers to get applications to production faster while lowering DevOps costs. Day 2 needs are also taken care of, including granular RBAC for access control, encryption using Azure KMS, cross zone availability with zero second RPO, and cross region availability.
Customers run their business-critical applications and data on Portworx on AKS for scale and resilience. With Kubernetes Apps on the Azure Marketplace, AKS customers can now seamlessly purchase and utilize the capabilities of Portworx Enterprise from directly within the AKS management plane.
“Many of our customers run their modern data-rich cloud native applications with Portworx on Azure. With the launch of Microsoft Container Marketplace, our customers will have the ability to easily access Portworx – the #1 Cloud Native Storage and Data Services Platform – combined with the scalability and reliability of Azure to run their business-critical applications in production and at scale. We are excited to extend our partnership with Microsoft Azure as a launch partner in the marketplace.” - Murli Thirumale, VP & GM, Portworx by Pure Storage
Get started with Portworx on the Azure Marketplace: Portworx Enterprise by Pure Storage
CloudCasa by Catalogic
CloudCasa is a simple yet powerful Kubernetes backup service, recognized recently by GigaOm as a Kubernetes Data Protection Leader and Outperformer. Organizations can benefit from the service within minutes of signing up and skip the complexity of setting up a dedicated backup infrastructure. Furthermore, teams can centralize data protection across Kubernetes clusters deployed in both hybrid cloud as well as multi-cloud models. CloudCasa is fully compatible with the popular open-source backup tool Velero, enabling AKS users to centrally manage their Velero instances as well as perform a full stack AKS backup and recovery.
Using Kubernetes Apps, AKS customers can now easily find, subscribe to and deploy CloudCasa as an extension on any cluster delivering enterprise-grade, cloud-native data protection and management. With a one-click seamless deployment of CloudCasa, AKS customers can now centralize data protection across a multi-cluster environment, protect against ransomware, mobilize application copies for test/dev, and recover in alternate tenants and regions.
“With more customers choosing managed Kubernetes offerings such as AKS, it is obvious that they also choose to offload data protection to a managed service like CloudCasa. With one click installation and integrated billing, Azure is generously facilitating innovators like CloudCasa to access the trusted procurement channels Microsoft has built over several decades” said Yongkang He, a CNCF Ambassador and organizer of the fast-growing Kubernetes User Group”
Get started with CloudCasa on the Azure Marketplace: CloudCasa by Catalogic
Weaveworks
Weave GitOps Enterprise (WGE) is the GitOps software built on Flux, enhancing AKS to deliver cloud-native applications and infrastructure quickly and reliably at scale. Platform teams can build internal developer platforms on AKS. Applications teams can utilize secure CI/CD pipelines to operate applications in the cloud, on premise, or at the edge. Weave GitOps Enterprise works with many of the popular tools such as Helm and Terraform on AKS. A single centralized management console offers unparalleled control, flexibility, and customization for true GitOps at scale resulting in increased developer productivity and higher reliability and stability.
We are excited to join the AKS Azure Marketplace to bring our Weave GitOps Enterprise software to the AKS users looking to have GitOps backed resilience, ease of scale, cluster management, and application pipeline support. Our stand-out features include multiple cluster management dashboard; WGE control panel that visualizes application lifecycle, drift, and cluster health among other critical metrics; application pipelines for observable, repeatable, and secure promotions. Weaveworks offers private offer pricing for annual support subscriptions of WGE per node, per cluster, or application based. Please contact us to discuss your best option.
"We are excited to bring the automation and scale of Weave GitOps to the Azure Marketplace. With one click, AKS can strengthen resilience, ease of scale, cluster management, and application pipeline support with the market leading GitOps solution built on FluxCD. Weave GitOps customers build internal developer platforms on AKS, bridge hybrid and multi cloud infrastructure, as well as leverage simpler operations of applications with secure CI/CD pipelines in the cloud, on premise or at the edge." - Mike Kress, VP of Business Development and Alliances
To get started with the Weaveworks offer on the Azure Marketplace contact here: azure-partner-team@weave.works
Bitnami
Bitnami provides prepackaged, ready-to-use applications, tailored for individual developers’ use, with no need for any additional configurations or setups. Bitnami’s community catalog has over 150 custom-packaged open source software solutions, delivered through various open source software libraries and enterprise marketplaces. Leveraging more than a decade of experience in packaging, updating and publishing an extensive library of open source applications, the Bitnami applications are delivered following industry-standard best practices and tested for use in all major end platforms.
Get started with Bitnami on the Azure Marketplace and search for Bitnami Kubernetes Apps: https://aka.ms/KubernetesAppsInMarketplace
Learn More
- Get started with Kubernetes Apps: https://aka.ms/deployK8sApp.
- Find other Kubernetes Apps listed on Azure Marketplace: https://aka.ms/KubernetesAppsInMarketplace
- For Customer support, please visit: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/aks-support-help#create-an-azure-support-request
- Partner with us: If you are an ISV or Azure partner interested in listing your Kubernetes App, please visit: http://aka.ms/K8sAppsGettingStarted
- Learn more about Partner Benefits: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/marketplace/overview#why-sell-with-microsoft
- For Partner Support, please visit: https://partner.microsoft.com/support/?stage=1