Gartner defines container management as offerings that support the deployment and operation of containerized workloads. It uses a combination of technologies (many open source) that enable agile application deployments and infrastructure modernization. Delivery methods include stand-alone software or as a service. Container management automates the provisioning, operation and life cycle management of containerized workloads at scale. Centralized governance and security policies are used to manage container workloads and associated resources. Container management supports the requirements of modern applications (also refactoring legacy applications), including platform engineering, cloud management and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Benefits include improved agility, elasticity and access to innovation.
Edge computing platform (ECP) delivers software infrastructure and/or services to support edge applications and data processing, centralized management and orchestration of the edge software stack at many remote sites, and edge, cloud and endpoint connectivity and integration. The ECP market provides a foundation, management and orchestration, and cloud integration for widely distributed edge computing nodes where a large number of locations and zero-touch management are required. Edge computing locations are at or near the physical edge (e.g., plant floors, retail stores, vehicles, 5G mobile edge compute [MEC], micro data centers, etc.). The ECP supports edge workloads, which demand low latency, local data processing and/or disconnected state. This includes local applications, data filtering, streaming data analysis, closed-loop automation and AI/machine learning (ML). Containers are the most common edge-native application architecture, with variants of Kubernetes clustering. However, virtual machines are also used to support traditional or existing operational technology (OT) workloads. The ECP can be software and/or services. It doesn’t include hardware — although the software infrastructure of some ECPs can be integrated (as appliances) in hardware, or limited to specialty hardware.