In a recent interview at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon London, Shaun O’Meara, CTO of Mirantis, shared insights about the company’s renewed focus on open source and its latest contributions to the cloud-native ecosystem. The conversation highlighted Mirantis‘ strategic direction, particularly around Kubernetes management at scale and support for AI workloads.

Embracing Open Source Once Again

After what O’Meara candidly described as having “lost their way a little bit,” Mirantis has made a strong return to its open source roots. This commitment is most visible in the recent announcement that k0s, Mirantis’ lightweight Kubernetes distribution, has been accepted into the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) sandbox.

“We’ve gotten back into our open source vibes again with the announcement of k0s being accepted into the CNCF sandbox. It’s just very, very exciting for us. It’s been a while since we’ve been in that position,” O’Meara explained.

This move represents more than just a single project contribution – it signals Mirantis’ broader philosophy shift, with O’Meara emphasizing that “everything we’re doing moving forward as a company is in the open source space.”

At the center of Mirantis’ cloud native offerings is k0rdent, described as a “distributed container management platform” designed to solve the challenge of managing Kubernetes at scale. Released in early 2024, k0rdent provides a comprehensive solution for multi-cluster management and service orchestration across diverse environments.

O’Meara explained k0rdent’s purpose: “The focus of k0rdent is to solve the problem of managing Kubernetes at scale. But it’s more than just Kubernetes for us – the idea is we’re taking Kubernetes and using it as the abstraction layer for all future infrastructure management, allowing customers to build a single environment across multiple providers.”

Tackling the AI Workload Challenge

Perhaps most notable is Mirantis’ focus on supporting AI workloads, which require specialized hardware and complex networking setups. O’Meara highlighted how Mirantis’ deep infrastructure expertise positions them to address these challenges:

“All of these new AI workloads depend on highly specialized hardware, advanced networking and complex RDMA—like InfiniBand. This is all massive levels of complexity,” he said. “We are infrastructure specialists. This is what we’ve been doing for the last 24 years.”

Mirantis has partnered with Gcore to develop a full-stack inference solution on top of k0rdent, making it easier for organizations to deploy and manage AI models. This collaboration aims to simplify the distribution of language models and machine learning models by “removing the learning curve” for organizations looking to implement AI solutions.

Real-World Implementation: The Nebul Case Study

The interview highlighted how Netherlands-based private cloud service provider Nebul has already deployed k0rdent in production. As a sovereign AI GPU provider, Nebul uses k0rdent to manage Kubernetes clusters, virtualization, and inference layers while maintaining full, hard multi-tenancy for its customers.

“Nebul has deployed k0rdent on top of their environment to manage the deployment of Kubernetes clusters, as well as virtualization—such as OpenStack clusters—and the inference layer that provides sovereign GPU services within the Netherlands,” O’Meara shared.

The implementation allows Nebul to “dynamically build environments for multi-tenanted customers on the fly,” maximizing the value of expensive GPU resources and accelerating service delivery to customers.

O’Meara emphasized how open source technology enables organizations to maintain sovereignty and independence regardless of changing political landscapes:

“Open source gives them the ability to control their own destiny,” he noted. “It removes the concern of companies being impacted by the political landscape. It enables them to operate independently—regardless of the political climate or changes in corporate ownership.”

This aspect is particularly relevant given recent initiatives like Sweden’s investment in building a hypercloud, as companies and countries increasingly seek technological sovereignty.

Looking Ahead

Mirantis continues to expand the k0rdent ecosystem with upcoming features including improved bare metal management, enhanced application deployment capabilities, and an enterprise support model that addresses security, SBOM handling, and software supply chain concerns.

“Enterprise support—which is really important—is a layer on top of the open source, handling security, SBOMs, and the software supply chain,” O’Meara emphasized. “We’re not offering a different set of code for the enterprise, and that’s very important to us.”

As the company continues its journey back to open source, Mirantis is positioning itself at the intersection of Kubernetes management, AI infrastructure, and sovereign cloud solutions—all built on the foundation of open technologies that give customers choice and control over their technological destiny.

Guest: Shaun O’Meara (LinkedIn)
Company: Mirantis
Show: KubeStruck