Kubernetes popularity has surged in the last year, with over 5.6 million developers utilizing the cloud-native technologies, up 67 percent from the previous year. For those unfamiliar with Kubernetes, it is a Google-created open source container project that automates, monitors, and runs applications.
Kubernetes is one of the most popular technologies among cloud-native developers, but it can be difficult to manage as a company expands. Kubecost’s open-source tools for monitoring, managing and optimizing Kubernetes spend at scale attempt to ease some of those growing pains. Webb Brown and Ajay Tripathy, two former Google workers who worked on infrastructure monitoring solutions for Google infrastructure and Google Cloud, formed the startup in 2019.
“By far, with this significant transition to containers, there has been a challenge in the market around pricing, performance, and dependability,” Brown told TechCrunch. “Teams were receiving benefits while completely abandoning visibility in expenditure, similar to having a multimillion-dollar payroll but having no idea which department, team, or individual is getting paid what,” Brown added that without that information, the downstream implications might include increased waste – he has seen teams overspend by as much as 80% when they don’t know the cost of a product.
Kubecost set out to deliver the real-time cost visibility and insights required to continuously monitor and cut millions of dollars in Kubernetes-related cloud expenditures, recognizing the necessity for teams to have spending safety nets to cushion for future shocks. Brown claims that the company’s main product would always be open source and freely available to teams. It also offers a commercial product for businesses that can be operationally deployed in minutes and tested or utilized without the need to speak with sales.
Customers don’t have to exchange information with Kubecost; instead, the technology interacts with the customer’s cloud or on-premise data center, bringing open-source information into the customer’s environment. From there, real-time data is collected and insights are supplied that reveal all of the places where a company is spending resources, driving up costs, and why costs are rising. Kubecost then gives recommendations on how to save expenses, issues alarms, or assists in the creation of rules that can be monitored over time.
Kubecost already handles over $2 billion in Kubernetes spend and works with over 2,000 enterprises, including over 100 enterprise customers – a number that has increased threefold year over year with five times the engagement metrics. The annual recurring revenue of the corporation is increasing threefold year over year. Brown did not provide a particular corporate valuation but did indicate it had increased fivefold from the previous year. The startup raised $25 million in Series funding in a round-headed by Coatue Management, with participation from seed investors First Round Capital and Afore Capital, with adoption expected to continue on its upward trajectory. Coatue partner David Cahn will join Kubecost’s board of directors as part of the transaction.
The new capital will put money into recruiting on a broad scale. Kubecost’s roots are in open source, and Brown intends to spend heavily in that community as well as new features. It’s also getting ready to roll out a slew of new features, as well as integrations with other ecosystem goods and additional research and development into insights and optimizations.
In addition, the firm is beginning its adventure with “Hosted Kubecost,” a value-add for teams who wish to let the company maintain the features on their behalf after experiencing the product. “Overall, there has been an unbelievable wave of a fundamental shift from cloud to containers,” Brown said. “When you look at it, it’s as huge as the transition from data centers to the cloud.” “Kubernetes is at the core of today’s enterprise IT stack.” We intend to delve further there in order to make transitions and build a large-scale solution that can handle all applications.”
