The CNCF is a powerhouse of cloud-native products, and these span a range of maturity levels, from sandbox to graduated.

It is fair to say, if you are building a Kubernetes (or even a straight Docker) platform, you will likely be looking at no less than 5 separate CNCF projects to form the basis of your platform. But is that the smartest move?

Projects get into the CNCF by being donated by the organizations that initially created them (eg K3s by Rancher, ArgoCD by Intuit, Flux by Weaveworks), but no longer want to be the primary "owner", and are looking for the community to take over the future of the project. These projects start their journey with CNCF by being submitted for acceptance, and if accepted, are classified as "sandbox" projects.

As a project proves to the CNCF committee that it has a vibrant community behind it, can attract community developers, and generally is seen positively, it moves to the "incubating" stage. Once it matures further and reaches wide-scale adoption and contribution, it moves to the "graduated" stage. You can think about these stages as "risk gates", and generally, the closer a project is to "graduated" the less risky (due to its now self-sufficient nature) it is deemed.

As a company looking to adopt Kubernetes, you 100% need to get yourself a Kubernetes management platform. If you are looking at assembling your own, from CNCF components, then I recommend limiting your scope to "graduated" projects, (unless you are large enough to be able to deal with the risk of projects that may not get as much developer love as others).

However, building a platform is only one approach, and to be honest, an approach that only organizations able to invest in their technical people (training, dedicated teams etc) and the resultant platform (ongoing updates/maintenance) should consider. For all other organizations, there is a smarter, less risky way, and that is to buy a Kubernetes management platform from a specialist provider.

Sure, buying a turn-key platform is not as much "fun" for your engineering team, but to be honest, in this economic climate, who can afford fun... we need things delivering value now. There is no faster way to achieve value than a turn-key solution.

Clearly, this is a blog by Portainer, and so of course we think of ourselves as the best "turn-key" Kubernetes platform you can buy... but of course we are biased.

So, should you build a platform from CNCF components, or should you buy a platform? Well, answer the following...

• Fast time-to-market: Implementing a pre-built solution like Portainer allows you to start managing your containerized applications more quickly, as it eliminates the time required to design, develop, test, and deploy a custom solution using CNCF components. This can help organizations achieve their infrastructure management goals more rapidly.
• Reduce maintenance burden: With Portainer, the responsibility of keeping the platform up-to-date, (and secure) falls on the Portainer team. In contrast, building a custom solution from CNCF components requires a dedicated team to maintain and update the platform, ensure compatibility with other components, and address security vulnerabilities.
• Lower total cost of ownership: Purchasing Portainer can result in a lower total cost of ownership when compared to building a custom solution, as it reduces the need for additional personnel, resources, and ongoing maintenance efforts. This allows organizations to allocate resources more efficiently.
• Simplified user experience: Portainer's unified, user-friendly interface makes it easy for team members to manage containerized applications, regardless of their technical expertise. Building a custom solution using CNCF components may require a more complex, less intuitive interface that could be challenging for non-experts to navigate.
• Robust support and documentation: Portainer offers extensive documentation and a large community of users who can provide support and best practices. With a custom-built solution using CNCF components, organizations may need to invest more time and effort into creating documentation and establishing their own support channels.
• Integration and compatibility: Portainer is designed as a single cohesive system, ensuring compatibility with various environments. Building a custom solution with CNCF components may require additional effort to ensure compatibility and seamless integration between different components.

So, which is right for you? Only you can decide that, but for sure, make sure the decision is made by someone holding responsibility for the IT budget, as they are the ones most likely to see the true costs of both strategies.

Neil