This article is based on reporting originally published by SDxCentral on February 27, 2020.
Mirantis Brings Kontena’s Kubernetes Engineers In-House
In February 2020, Mirantis announced it had recruited the leadership and core engineering team from Finland-based Kubernetes startup Kontena. The move was not a traditional acquisition: Mirantis did not purchase Kontena’s intellectual property or technology assets, as the company was in the process of liquidating. Instead, Mirantis pursued a talent-first hire, bringing aboard the people behind two of Kontena’s flagship products: the Pharos Kubernetes distribution and the Lens multi-cluster management dashboard.
Dave Van Everen, SVP of Marketing at Mirantis, confirmed the arrangement in an interview with SDxCentral, describing the incoming team as “talented Kubernetes experts” whose experience would “inform the Mirantis product roadmap.”
What Kontena Built: Pharos and Lens
Founded with the goal of making container orchestration more accessible, Kontena discovered Docker in 2014 and began building tools aimed at simplifying cluster administration. By 2018, the team had released two notable products:
- Pharos: A pre-built Kubernetes distribution designed to work on any infrastructure. Pharos aimed to simplify cluster management through a graphical interface and included tooling for security patching, platform updates, and ongoing lifecycle maintenance. It was commercially supported and covered the use of Kubernetes itself, positioning it alongside distributions such as Docker Enterprise Edition and Red Hat OpenShift.
- Lens: Originally an exclusive feature bundled within Pharos, Lens was released as a standalone product in late 2019. It provided a multi-cluster Kubernetes dashboard with visibility into cluster state, hands-on troubleshooting capabilities, built-in user management, and integration APIs compatible with most standard external authentication systems. Lens was often compared functionally to Grafana or the standard Kubernetes dashboard, but with a broader management focus.
Van Everen noted that Kontena’s core mission — reducing the operational complexity of Kubernetes — aligned directly with Mirantis’ strategic direction, making the talent acquisition a natural fit.
Context: The Docker Enterprise Acquisition
The Kontena talent hire followed Mirantis’ larger and more prominent move in November 2019: the acquisition of Docker Inc.’s Enterprise business. That deal gave Mirantis ownership of all Docker Enterprise customers and contracts, strategic technology alliances, partner programs, and approximately 300 Docker employees.
Docker Enterprise had been recognized as a leading container platform — a Forrester “New Wave” report from 2018 had placed it in the “leader” category alongside Red Hat and Rancher Labs. However, the rise of Kubernetes as the dominant container orchestration standard created significant headwinds for Docker’s commercial business, ultimately contributing to the company’s decision to divest its enterprise assets.
Van Everen described the Docker Enterprise integration as progressing well at the time, with Mirantis planning a new Docker Enterprise Engine (EE) update in the near term. The previous major release, version 3.0 (shipped in April 2019), had introduced greater customization, easier containerized application development, and Docker Kubernetes Service (DKS), a hosted Kubernetes service embedded within Docker EE.
Mirantis’ Strategic Position in the Container Market
Between the Docker Enterprise acquisition and the Kontena talent hire, Mirantis was consolidating its position as a full-stack container management platform with strong open source credentials. Van Everen argued that the combination addressed gaps on both sides: Docker Enterprise’s container runtime and developer tooling complemented Mirantis’ existing Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) capabilities.
“Mirantis is now regarded as an open alternative to IBM/Red Hat and VMware, which was not necessarily the case prior to the deal,” Van Everen said, adding that the company would “continue to be opportunistic” in building out its platform.
Mirantis was also continuing its work with AT&T on the carrier’s Airship deployment at the time — a multi-year, eight-figure contract to deliver core infrastructure software for AT&T’s 5G services. Kubernetes is a central component of that infrastructure. Van Everen confirmed Mirantis was fulfilling its obligations under the agreement but declined to provide further detail.
Why This Matters for Kubernetes Practitioners
The Kontena story illustrates a broader pattern in the Kubernetes ecosystem circa 2019–2020: the platform’s growing dominance created both opportunity and consolidation pressure. Startups building tools and distributions around Kubernetes faced steep competition from well-funded players, and those that could not scale commercially became talent pools for larger vendors.
For DevOps engineers, the key takeaways from this consolidation are practical:
- Tool continuity: When a vendor behind a tool you rely on is acquired or liquidates, the talent behind that tool often lands at a new organization. Tracking where engineers move can signal where future development will occur.
- Lens as a standalone product: Lens had already been released independently before Kontena’s wind-down, which helped preserve its availability for the community regardless of corporate changes.
- Distribution consolidation: The Kubernetes distribution market was narrowing, with commercial support increasingly concentrated among a smaller number of vendors capable of providing enterprise lifecycle management.
Original reporting by SDxCentral. Quotes attributed to Dave Van Everen, SVP of Marketing, Mirantis.