Lens 4.0 Kubernetes IDE is here

There's been a lot of excitement around here about Lens lately. And why not? With more than 1.3 million downloads and close to 10,000 stars on Github since its inception in March 2020, Lens has quickly become the world's most popular IDE for Kubernetes, and with release of Lens 4.0, that's likely to not just continue, but accelerate.

In particular, large enterprises are beginning to see the true value of Lens. Many of them feel the complexity of Kubernetes is slowing down adoption, preventing them from seeing the container ROI they were expecting.

Lens is a user-friendly desktop application for all your kubernetes platforms. It enables users to easily onboard and operate their applications in Kubernetes, improving time to market and productivity, and increasing ROI. It is a standalone application for MacOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems, and an open source project that dramatically simplifies application development for Amazon EKS, Google GKE, Microsoft AKS, Mirantis Container Cloud, Red Hat Openshift, and other CNCF-certified Kubernetes distributions.

In fact, we're so excited about the quality and value of Lens that we've added it to the lineup of products for which we provide commercial support and services.

Enterprise Support, Training and Services for Lens

Mirantis is the biggest contributor to, and in the driver’s seat of, the Lens open source project, and with all our know-how and insights into the Lens IDE user base, we have designed a suite of value-added services to help enterprises in their journey towards adopting, integrating, and unlocking the full potential of Lens at scale. With these value-added services, enterprises using Lens will enjoy faster time to market, productivity and ROI for their container infrastructure investments. These value-added services include:

• Technical Support:  Just like for any other enterprise-grade solution, you'll be able to get professional technical support to help you through any problems that you encounter, whether you're running on Windows, MacOS, or Linux, with a first response time of 4 business hours.
• Professional Services: We've seen how powerful Lens can be in remaking the way your developers create the software that runs your business, but as they say, "with great power comes great responsibility."  Mirantis provides professional services to ensure that your Lens deployments comply with any IT governance or guardrails you have in place, and we can help you create your own custom extensions to help Lens give you even more of a leg up over the competition.
• Training:  Mirantis Training provides private operator or developer track courses, and even training in extensions development.

Have we piqued your curiosity?  Schedule a demo to see what Lens can do.

Lens 4.0 New Features

The strength of the Lens Kubernetes IDE is in the way in which it takes managing Kubernetes clusters and workloads and the many, many, MANY objects and settings they involve and makes it not just straightforward, but simple. As Miska Kaipiainen, senior director of engineering and principal of the Lens open source project says in the community's blog announcing the new release, "These users are using Lens because it provides the full situational awareness for everything that runs in Kubernetes. It’s lowering the barrier of entry for people just getting started and radically improving productivity for people with more experience."

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxMJ3peRAX4&feature=emb_title[/embed]

Lens 4.0, which was released a few days ago, takes that utility to the next level with the addition of the Extensions API. The Extensions API means that any company, vendor, or individual developer can create plugins for Lens, enabling a seamless experience between their products and Kubernetes clusters.

We have been working with our partners and friends in the cloud native ecosystem to refine Lens 4.0 extension API capabilities. Some of these vendors have already made their first extensions available for public use, while others are still iterating. In the near future, you can look forward to extensions from companies such as:

• Ambassador Labs (formerly Datawire)
• Aqua Security
• Carbon Relay
• Carbonetes
• Clastix
• Eagle AI
• Kong
• nCipher
• Nu Skin International
• StackRox
• Wohlig Transformation

You can also create a Lens extension of your own or become a partner. To learn more, join us next Tuesday, December 15, when the Lens Kubernetes IDE User Group is hosting a virtual workshop, How to Build a Lens Extension.

Meanwhile, we want to congratulate the Lens community on this milestone, and remind you to watch this space for more information on creating extensions of your own!

If you haven't tried Lens yet, check out the Lens - Kubernetes IDE download tutorial.