Fujitsu and Rancher Labs Join Forces to Drive Kubernetes Adoption in Government

Alliance will address the urgent need for legacy transformation and cloud migration in a host of public sector scenarios

CUPERTINO, Calif. & LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Containers—Rancher Labs, the creators of Rancher, the world’s most widely used Kubernetes management platform, and global IT services and solutions company Fujitsu in the UK, are joining forces to hasten the adoption of Kubernetes container orchestration technology within public sector institutions.

The partnership has been forged, partly in response to the growing requirement, set out by the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS), for public organizations to embrace a ‘Cloud First’ policy, and the urgent need for an agile DevOps approach to digital transformation. Starting with projects for the UK and Irish Governments, the partnership will deepen in the coming months to drive legacy transformation and digital modernization within the UK&I public sector.

Jason Daniels CTO, Public Sector, Law and Order at Fujitsu UK, believes the complexities inherent in public sector computing make clear the rationale for Kubernetes adoption, “Government departments and agencies operate highly complex IT estates – running hybrid IT and multi-cloud environments across different geographical locations, all addressing different security classifications. Add macro-level changes to the equation – the uncertainty associated with COVID-19 and Brexit – and the challenge of modernizing existing and legacy infrastructure is obvious. Containerization addresses this complexity by abstracting development away from the underlying hardware and tactical cloud investments so that developers can focus on developing their applications.”

In containers, developers can create highly portable code that can be developed once but then deployed to multiple environments or hybrid infrastructure, across multiple security classifications. Add Kubernetes and it’s now possible to scale across disperse datacenters with consistent networking and access control. Kubernetes, however, requires a certain skill set and, as Daniels suggests, working with an orchestration partner like Rancher can dramatically reduce the management overhead. “If we deploy Kubernetes on-premise in a private cloud but then need to port an application to Amazon Web Services or Azure, how do I then manage the complexity where I have multiple Kubernetes deployments, and how do I best support developers in this challenge? The answer is Rancher.”

“Rancher brings Fujitsu the ability to operate across all environments – from private to public cloud and everything between. Rancher provides unified multi cluster management on top of Kubernetes, along with an enhanced identity authentication and access control that allows our public sector customers to stay close to deployments, and tooling catalogues to ease application deployment. Rancher also eases upgrade cycles, a significant challenge in complex IT environments.”

Peter Dalziel, EMEA Director of Partners & Alliances at Rancher Labs: “Public sector infrastructure management comes with unique challenges. With Fujitsu’s deep knowledge in Government, and our platform’s ability to hasten digital transformation, we are in the perfect position to benefit public sector organizations of all kinds. We look forward to a long and productive alliance.”

Olivier Maes, Managing Director EMEA at Rancher Labs said: “We see an acceleration in cloud native infrastructure projects across Government agencies in Europe. This is being fueled by the need for better citizen services and more flexible IT environments to manage complexity, cost, speed and agility. Rancher’s 100 percent open source model, combined with Fujitsu’s deep expertise in the public sector, give us a strong proposition in this sector.”

Finally, Daniels concludes, Rancher Labs’ open ethos, and industry position makes it a natural partner. “Another important factor is Rancher is open source, and a project within the Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF) of which Fujitsu is a Platinum member. Like Rancher Labs, Fujitsu sits on the CNCF board – helping to lead the future. When evaluating Rancher there was no other solution that provided that combination or breadth of offering or alignment.”

Public sector institutions looking to become more agile, cloud-native and microservices centric can find out more here. Government IT teams can also find out how to develop a meaningful Kubernetes strategy by downloading this White Paper from Rancher Labs.

Interested in becoming a Rancher partner? Visit us at https://rancher.com/partners/

About Rancher Labs

Rancher Labs delivers open-source software that enables organizations to deploy and manage Kubernetes at scale, on any infrastructure across the data center, cloud, branch offices, and the network edge. With 30,000 active users and greater than 100 million downloads, their flagship product, Rancher, is the industry’s most widely adopted Kubernetes management platform. For additional information, visit www.rancher.com and follow @Rancher_Labs on Twitter. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 130,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.9 trillion yen (US$35 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.

About Fujitsu UK and Ireland

Fujitsu UK & Ireland employs over 9,000 people. We promote a Human Centric Intelligent Society, in which innovation is driven by the integration of people, information and infrastructure. We are committed to Digital Co-creation, blending business expertise with digital technology and creating new value with ecosystem partners and customers. We enable our customers to digitally transform with connected technology services, focused on Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Cloud – all underpinned by Security. Our customers cover both the public and private sectors, including retail, financial services, transport, manufacturing, government and defense. For more information please see http://uk.fujitsu.com