LAS VEGAS — VMware and Pivotal today at VMworld 2017 announced Pivotal Container Service (PKS), the commercial version of open source Project Kubo that will allow customers to deploy and manage Kubernetes on-premises. The two companies collaborated with Google to develop PKS.

“We know our customers have challenges running Kubernetes in their data centers,” said Pivotal CEO Rob Mee on stage with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell during the day-two keynote.

Gelsinger added: “Customers face this challenge: we have the cool kids over here doing container development stuff but how do we bring that into production?”

The new product, targeted at enterprises and service providers, will deliver production-ready Kubernetes on VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The initial PKS release will include Kubernetes via BOSH, VMware’s NSX networking technology, and a jointly developed version of Open Services Broker API that allows integration of GCP services into PKS applications. It also offers constant compatibility to Google Container Engine (GKE).

Late last year Pivotal and Google Cloud partnered on Kubo, a joint effort to bring the multicloud deployment capabilities of Pivotal Cloud Foundry to Kubernetes clusters. The open source technology provides a uniform way to deploy and manage Kubernetes on any cloud.

Sam Ramji, VP or product management at Google Cloud, said building Google Cloud services into PKS enables hybrid cloud environments.

“Container-centric cloud is a more portable cloud,” Ramji said. “I think everybody here has seen container adoptions hit warp speed. … Our customers really want to be able to run compute where they want, sometimes in their data center, sometimes in the cloud, sometimes in many clouds.”

PKS is slated for general availability in the fourth quarter of this year. It will ship as a standalone product able to integrate with Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) and VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure.

During the keynote address, Ramji also announced that VMware joined Pivotal as a platinum member of Google Cloud’s Kubo Collaboration.

Photo: (from left) VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, Pivotal CEO Rob Mee, Google Cloud VP of Product Management Sam Ramji, and Dell Technologies CEO Micheal Dell discuss Pivotal Container Service during the VMworld 2017 day-two keynote.