Given how pluggable k8s is, it should not surprise you that there are companies at every integration point. Tigera for network policy. Security policy vendors using admission controllers to secure clusters. Linkerd/Istio for service mesh. Storage vendors. Etc. Each integration point provides a hook for someone to do better than the default behavior and charge for it.

The ecosystem is thriving and because the k8s platform was built to be pluggable; it is an actual platform. Docker (the company) tried to monopolize and monetize when they built Swarm, and that’s why they lost the cluster orchestrator space IMO. Docker (the tool) is just a tool, not really something you can monetize easily. Docker (the image format) is where most of the value lives, there isn’t much value to extract there as it’s an open protocol.

Docker (the tool) was commoditized by k8s, and now there isn’t really any way to charge for a differentiated implementation. Providing a registry and a best-in-class Docker for Desktop experience isn’t going to be a huge TAM.