Rancher Labs has partnered with IT services and solutions company Fujitsu to drive the adoption of Kubernetes container orchestration technology within the UK public sector.
Rancher says the partnership is in response to the growing requirement, set out by the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS), for public organisations to embrace a ‘Cloud First’ policy. It also cites an urgent need for an agile DevOps approach to digital transformation.
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 multicloud 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 modernising existing and legacy infrastructure is obvious.
“Containerisation addresses this complexity by abstracting development away from the underlying hardware and tactical cloud investments so that developers can focus on developing their applications.”
If you liked this content…
Identity in the Public Sector: Common IdAM Mistakes
Think Digital Identity and Cybersecurity for Government: Key Takeaways
Frontline public service workers lead AI adoption in the UK’s “invisible AI workforce”
AI and the UK’s public sector: A blueprint for global leadership
Lack of data tools sees public sector failing to recoup fraud losses
Starting with projects for the UK and Irish Governments, it adds that the two will continue to “drive legacy transformation and digital modernisation within the UK&I public sector” in the coming months.
Rancher argues that 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. With Kubernetes it’s also possible to scale across disperse datacentres with consistent networking and access control.
Olivier Maes, managing director EMEA at Rancher Labs points to an acceleration in cloud native infrastructure projects across Government agencies in Europe. “This is being fuelled 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.”
“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,” said Daniels. “Like Rancher Labs, Fujitsu sits on the CNCF board – helping to lead the future.”
