LF Networking Welcomes Loodse as Newest Member

An Interview with Loodse CEO and Co-Founder Sebastian Scheele

Linux Foundation Networking is pleased to welcome Loodse as its newest member! Loodse is focused on cloud-native technologies and Kubernetes. We spoke with Loodse CEO and Co-Founder Sebastian Scheele via email about the company’s business, its passion for open source and why they decided to join LF Networking. See below.

How did Loodse got involved open source?
Our entire business model is centered on cloud-native technologies and Kubernetes. That is why we have been involved in the open source community, and particularly the cloud-native community since Loodse was founded in early 2016.

We believe that open source communities develop better software in a shorter time – to the benefit of all. We actively contribute to upstream Kubernetes, the Kubernetes dashboard, and other projects like Machine Controller and KubeOne that aim at facilitating the enterprise adoption of Kubernetes. We were also an early member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and regularly organize Kubernetes/Cloud Native Meetups in major cities across Europe.

What made Loodse decide to join the LFN Community?
The actual idea of joining the LFN community came up because we see the future demand for more and more Network services to run on Kubernetes. We realized that there is a lot of synergy between the LFN projects and our cloud-native background.

We think that cloud-native networking has been neglected so far, in part because it is a rather complex area. Of course, there are some existing projects, like Istio Service Mesh, but currently, we see more use cases than viable solutions. This is something we want to change and that can only be changed through a community approach, which is why we joined LFN.

Describe a real-world use-case that Loodse’s open source solutions address.
5G and the corresponding movement of machines to edge computing is a good example. We believe that cloud-native technologies and Kubernetes are a perfect fit to run this game-changing technology. Our focus is to enable customers to operate Kubernetes clusters and the workload as easily and smoothly as possible. We believe managing the huge number of machines and applications is only possible by running them on autopilot, with as few operational interventions as possible.

What are Loodse’s plans for working with the LFN community moving forward?
We are committed to bringing our expertise in cloud-native to LFN projects, in order to advance state-of-the-art networking. Currently, we are working with the LFN team to help organize this year’s  Cloud Native Network Services Day @ KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2019. We also plan to contribute to Network Service Mesh development and strengthen the exchange through collaboration with cloud native and finally with the networking community via our Meetups.