DEVOPSdigest

Lucidworks and Platform9 announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the rollout of Fusion 5 containerized AI applications on customer self-hosted infrastructure through the Lucidworks Kubernetes Service (LKS).

As part of the partnership, Lucidworks has deployed Platform9's Managed Kubernetes as a Service solution to help Lucidworks power its Fusion 5 platform, with customers in key verticals such as retail, financial services, and healthcare.

"Moving to a cloud-native architecture built on microservices and container orchestration with Kubernetes is essential for supporting scalable information retrieval," said Lucidworks CEO Will Hayes. "Lucidworks has modernized Fusion with a cloud-native microservices architecture orchestrated by Kubernetes. This allows customers to dynamically scale application resources as utilization ebbs and flows, reducing the effort of deploying and upgrading Fusion, and avoiding unscheduled downtime and performance degradation. Lucidworks Kubernetes Service (LKS), based on Platform9's technology, removes application rollout and management barriers on-premises or in the cloud and accelerates the adoption of Fusion 5, our most recent solution release."

Integrated AI search applications are a key weapon in the enterprise inventory to better understand customer buying patterns and behaviors. These types of applications, like many others, are increasingly becoming containerized for deployment. Kubernetes has become the go-to platform for scheduling, managing and dynamically orchestrating containers, but comes with its own issues of complexity, scale and personnel training and retention. Platform9 addresses these issues head-on with its SaaS Managed model, ease of deployment and guaranteed service SLA, enabling containerized applications like Fusion 5 to be quickly, widely and efficiently distributed and run in the enterprise.

Hayes continued, "Lucidworks Kubernetes Service is a Kubernetes 'easy button' that allows our customers to experience the benefits of Fusion 5 without the complexity of managing Kubernetes in-house. Platform9's key technology and support capabilities allow us to optimize application delivery for customers across retail, financial services, and healthcare. Removing deployment complexity in a Kubernetes environment truly unlocks the power of Fusion 5, lowering costs and empowering our customers to focus on other value-add activities."

Sirish Raghuram, CEO of Platform9, said: "Our SaaS-based management technology for Kubernetes will accelerate new site deployments, reduce ongoing operational complexity and provide faster troubleshooting and support for Lucidworks' customer intelligence solutions deployed by their extensive customer base worldwide."

Raghuram concluded, "Lucidworks keenly understands that Platform9's core values include eliminating Kubernetes operational deployment and management complexity, especially when scaling and operating these environments across distributed customer on-premises or cloud locations, and enabling continuous up-stream open-source container innovations via disruption-free upgrades. This, coupled with Platform9's guaranteed support SLA, allows Lucidworks customers to fully focus on profiting from the customer intelligence provided by Lucidworks solutions."