Kismatic, a startup offering a commercial version of Kubernetes, the open source container management platform, has been acquired by platform-as-a-service (PaaS) vendor Apprenda.

The deal, announced today, puts Apprenda in the container orchestration business. The primary competition for a commercial Kubernetes offering would be CoreOS, with its Tectonic platform.

Apprenda was founded with a focus on putting older applications onto the cloud. Put it this way: Java and Microsoft's .NET get mentioned a lot on the company's blog.

But Apprenda couldn't ignore the rise of containers forever. In March, the company added Kubernetes support to its platform, touting it as a unified management tool for legacy applications and the new breed of cloud-native applications.

Apprenda has raised $56 million, including a $24 million round last year. But the company faces stiff competition in PaaS from the likes of Pivotal, the EMC and VMware spinoff that just raised a $253 million Series C.

Photo: Jorge Jaramillo on Flickr. CC2.0 license. Photo has been brightened and cropped.