Ahead of the show, VMblog spoke with Platform9 co-founder and CEO, Sirish Raghuram.

VMblog:  As a KubeCon 2018 sponsor, how can people find you at the show?

Sirish Raghuram:  Platform9 is a Gold sponsor, our booth # is G1.

VMblog:  Can you give VMblog readers a sneak peek as to what you will be showing off at your booth?  What should attendees expect to see and hear at your booth?

Raghuram:  Beyond stopping by for cool swag, stop by the Platform9 booth for 2 cool demos:

1.  See the industry's only SaaS-managed enterprise Kubernetes solution in action. Learn how you can centrally manage Kubernetes, Serverless Functions and VMs on any infrastructure - on-premises or in the public cloud.

Platform9's Kubernetes-as-a-Service gives you production-grade K8s in less than an hour, anywhere. It reduces IT operational overhead with zero touch upgrades, management, and maintenance.

2.  See how you get the most out of your K8s cluster and take advantage of the speed and cost savings of Serverless applications - on any environment.

Fission is the leading open source, Kubernetes-native, serverless framework. It allows you to code serverless functions in any language, and have them run wherever you have a Kubernetes cluster: in the public cloud, in your own datacenter, or even on your laptop. Fission automatically manages the infrastructure for you. There's no need for in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes at scale, no containers to build or registries to manage. 

VMblog:  How does your company and product fit within the container or cloud ecosystem? 

Raghuram:  You already know what Kubernetes (and Serverless apps running on Kubernetes) can do for your business. Kubernetes is the de-facto standard for container orchestration today, among developers and enterprise IT alike. But -- we know Kubernetes is notoriously difficult to deploy and operate at scale, particularly on-premises.

Platform9 hybrid cloud solution turns your existing infrastructure into a cloud, instantly. We enable you to easily modernize your apps and your infrastructure to take advantage of Kubernetes and Serverless with a touch of a button. This is alongside managing VMs and traditional apps- all in a single platform, with a single pane of glass. 

You can be up and running with enterprise-grade K8s and Serverless - across public clouds and on-premises datacenters - within less than an hour, with no management overhead or painful setup.

VMblog:  Thinking about your company, give readers a few reasons why your product or service is considered unique.

Raghuram:  Platform9 offers the the industry's only SaaS-managed offering: Simplify management with a financially-backed SLA with seamless management, monitoring, bug fixes, and patches delivered consistently, as-a-service.

We're the only solution that lets you leverage your existing infrastructure- either on public clouds, on-premises or at the edge. You simply plug-in all your environments to our SaaS-managed control plane, to benefit from a consistent cloud management experience across all types of infrastructure and applications.

We provide pure-play open source Kubernetes, delivered as a service. This ensure open source innovation, economics and interoperability, without the management overhead.

We provide a unified cloud experience: Simple, centralized view of assets across public, private, and hybrid clouds - and across Containers, Serverless, and VMs.

VMblog:  Have you sponsored KubeCon before?  If so, what do you like most about this event?  What brings you back as a sponsor?

Raghuram:  We did sponsor the conference in the past. We find the event to be a great mix of technical attendees and enterprise companies looking to do great things with Kubernetes, at scale. It's exhilarating to hear about what the K8s community is up to and all the great innovation in the space.

VMblog:  What are you looking forward to most at this year's event?

Raghuram:  Geeking out with the K8s community about all the innovation in the space, and discussing use cases and best practices for Kubernetes in the enterprise- how to make it easier to consume and manage, how to make it more secure, and how to take the pain out of upgrades, etc.

VMblog:  What would you say to prospective attendees who are thinking about attending KubeCon but aren't sure if it's worth it or not?

Raghuram:  Kubernetes is the most transformational technology today. It is the #1 enabler for digital transformation these days, and is becoming the "operating system" for cloud-native applications. In short: it's the future of software delivery. If you're at all curious about Kubernetes and accelerating your time to market with new applications and modernizing existing ones- you need to be at this conference.

VMblog:  What do you hope to come away with from exhibiting at KubeCon?  What does event success look like to you?

Raghuram:  Having great conversations with like-minded people who are betting on Kubernetes to transform their business!

VMblog:  Does your company have any speaking sessions during the show?  If so, can you give us the who, what, when and where?

Raghuram:  We did speak at KubeCon China this November, about Serverless Performance on a Budget  and spoke at KubeCon Copenhagen earlier this year about Function Composition in a Serverless World. We are not speaking at KubeCon Seattle this year, though.