Kubernetes

Open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery, building on principles that allow planet-scale workloads without proportionally increasing operations teams.

Kubernetes is a CNCF graduated project and the de facto standard for container orchestration, backed by a large ecosystem of tools and managed offerings. Designed with the flexibility to run on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud, workloads can move freely between environments. Adopted by enterprises such as Babylon, Booking.com, and Booz Allen for rapid iteration and consistent delivery across complex infrastructures.

Key capabilities:

• Automated rollouts and rollbacks with progressive deployment and self-healing for crashed or failed containers
• Service discovery, load balancing, and storage orchestration for stateful and stateless workloads
• Automatic bin packing, horizontal and vertical scaling based on CPU or custom metrics
• Secret and configuration management without rebuilding images or exposing credentials
• Extensibility through custom resources, operators, and a plugin architecture

Engineering teams use Kubernetes for microservices orchestration, batch and CI workloads, machine learning pipelines, and multi-cloud or hybrid deployments. The declarative API and ecosystem of Helm charts, operators, and GitOps tooling integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure as code.