As stated the last time we discussed containers, especially Kubernetes, they represent a significant challenge for IT. You can easily lose track of applications in containers, including whether or not you’re licensed.

Container-based licensing is evolving, and there are compliance and cost issues to consider when implementing it in your IT estate. They also presently represent a significant risk for the organizations that use them more and more. It is notoriously difficult to discover or track the software included inside, which may be licensed from commercial vendors.

Not only can they be difficult to manage, but containers are a scalable technology bridge between on-premises and cloud; To facilitate better cloud migration decision-making and better management of IT assets undergoing this transition, organizations must be able to improve their view of their IT asset inventory. With this uncertainty, it’s understandable that many organizations have issues tracking and managing container inventory effectively.

My environment is unique and has distinct security requirements

For deploying Kubernetes in highly secure environments, organizations often have governance policies in place that do not allow additional processes to run when an image is deployed to the cluster. This is where Flexera comes in.

Flexera knows containers, especially Kubernetes. the Flexera Kubernetes Inventory Agent works with the least required privileges, deployed on the container itself, to collect Kubernetes cluster inventory and annotations. Plus, it even integrates with IBM’s Certified IBM Licensing Service.

While other tools can discover containers – and the software they contain, managed and orchestrated by Kubernetes – as well as the display hierarchy within the IT estate, none can show what Flexera One shows: an analysis detail of the software running in these containers that is needed to really improve visibility and actionability.

This process solves a problem that many organizations have had with a lack of transparency in their containerized environments. Using Flexera Kubernetes discovery removes the dependency of many organizations on libraries, using a lightweight agent to discover inventory with minimal need for privileged access, and therefore minimal additional work and overhead. disruptions for your teams.

Containers are part of a larger and ever-changing ecosystem

Like managing IT assets, including software and hardware, expands and blurs the lines between SaaS and the cloud Visibility and management responsibilities, it is important for organizations to continue to adapt to changing technologies. Just as technology has evolved to integrate the demand for virtual machines and SaaS over the past decades, container visibility is another element that companies must continue to involve in their technology strategy, whether with container orchestrators. like Kubernetes, as well as the less used Rancher, Docker Swarm or Mesos, or with specific pre-integrated containerized software like IBM Cloud Paks built on Red Hat OpenShift.

To find out how Flexera can help you master the discovery and management of your container inventory, ask us for a demo.