By Stephanie Susnjara,Ian Smalley
Publication Date: 2026-02-25 12:00:00
Containerization consists of packaging software code with only the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies—typically Linux-based—required to run it. This process creates a single lightweight unit, such as a container, that can run consistently across any infrastructure.
As organizations shifted from virtual machines (VMs) to containers, the need to manage containerized workloads at scale grew. Docker, introduced in 2013, made containers widely accessible by offering developers a standardized way to build and share them. But orchestrating hundreds or thousands of containers across hybrid multicloud environments requires a way to handle complexity. Hence, Kubernetes was developed to automate the deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications.
Created by Google in 2014, Kubernetes is an open source platform maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Major cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM…