Hewlett Packard Enterprise has hit the green button on the HPE Container Platform it trailed a mere four months ago.

In a blog announcing the move, Kumar Sreekanti, HPE’s CTO of hybrid IT, said HPE’s take was “an enterprise-grade container platform designed to deploy both cloud-native applications and monolithic applications with persistent data storage, using pure open source Kubernetes.”

Kumar said customers’ demands included cost efficiency, reduced TCO and optimal performance, and this was driving demand for bare metal containers. “By removing the hypervisor and hardware virtualization layer, our customers can eliminate unnecessary overhead, avoid lock-in, and reduce “vTax” licensing.”

He took direct aim at hybrid approaches, of “embedding Kubernetes with the hypervisor—rationalizing that it allows customers to preserve their virtualization investment, tools, and training.” Such an approach was also a means for vendors to “stay relevant and maintain a grip on expensive license fees” while adding cost and complexity for customers.

HPE’s approach, he continued, was a “unified solution” building on the vendor’s BlueData and MapR buys – the former providing the control plane, the latter a unified data fabric for persistent container storage. Customers had the freedom to deploy to both VM and bare metal, and from edge to core to cloud, he said, or as the vendor’s documentation puts it, on-prem, “in multiple public clouds, or on the edge”.

The platform will also encompass an app store, featuring “curated, prebuilt images” for applications including machine learning and analytics and CI/CD. Needless to say, HPE will be offering a raft of professional services alongside the service, “to ensure faster time to value”. For customers, we hope.