Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., a technology company in Defense, National Security and Global Markets and Rancher Government Solutions (RGS), the leading provider of enterprise Kubernetes management solutions to the U.S. Government, announced today a strategic partnership to enable customers to seamlessly deploy and scale virtual ground systems using Kratos’ software-based OpenSpace® Platform.
With increasingly complex and dynamic satcom and Earth Observation missions, satellite operators and government agencies are transitioning from fixed and proprietary hardware to flexible and scalable generic compute-based cloud environments. This enables a virtualized and software-defined ground system like Kratos OpenSpace Platform to more cost effectively and securely support multiple missions simultaneously, deliver services faster and streamline operations.
Today, customers leverage a range of computing environments from bare metal, virtual machines to the cloud, making the deployment of software-based ground systems more complex and time consuming. Working together, Kratos and Rancher Government Solutions have enhanced the ability of the OpenSpace Platform, the first commercially available, fully virtualized and software-defined satellite ground system to be deployed more easily across customer environments.
“With Rancher, the OpenSpace Platform deploys its virtual functions including modems, channelizers, combiners, and more, as Kubernetes-based containerized software applications that act as independent and portable computing environments that can run and scale on any infrastructure,” said Brandon Gulla, Chief Technology Officer at RGS. “We are proud to be working with Kratos to support this truly transformational platform that will free satellite operators from proprietary hardware architectures and move to software-defined, flexible and extensible virtual platforms.”
By the nature of it being software-defined and containerized, the OpenSpace Platform is already much faster, and more flexible to deploy than traditional hardware-based satellite ground systems. As customer demands grow, the software-based OpenSpace Platform can reconfigure on the fly and deploy new services automatically and cost effectively in minutes. Software containers can be spun up and down and scaled on demand elastically using a single management interface from the Rancher Platform.
“Rancher serves as the Kubernetes management technology that supports the OpenSpace Platform’s ability to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of our containerized workloads,” said Anthony Semiao, Chief Solutions Architect of the OpenSpace Platform. “The combined technologies support hybrid and multi-cloud environments enabling OpenSpace customers to run in the data center and cloud environment of their choice such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft and to easily switch from one cloud provider to another.”
About Kratos OpenSpace
Kratos’ OpenSpace family of solutions enables the digital transformation of satellite ground systems to become a more dynamic and powerful part of the space network. OpenSpace® is the industry’s only commercially available digital transformation solution that enables operators of satellites, Ground Systems-as-a-Service (GSaaS) providers, teleports and others in the satellite services supply chain to capitalize on dynamic ground capabilities. The OpenSpace family consists of three product lines: OpenSpace SpectralNet for converting satellite RF signals to be used in digital environments; OpenSpace quantum products, which are virtual versions of traditional hardware components; and the OpenSpace Platform, the first commercially available, fully orchestrated, software-defined ground system. These three OpenSpace lines enable satellite operators and other service providers to implement digital operations at their own pace and in ways that meet their unique mission goals and business models.
About Kratos Defense & Security Solutions
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. is a technology, products, system and software company addressing the defense, national security, and commercial markets. Kratos makes true internally funded research, development, capital and other investments, to rapidly develop, produce and field solutions that address our customers’ mission critical needs and requirements. At Kratos, affordability is a technology, and we utilize proven, leading edge approaches and technology, not unproven bleeding edge approaches or technology, with Kratos’ approach reducing cost, schedule and risk, and enabling us to be first to market with cost effective solutions. Kratos is known as the innovative disruptive change agent in the industry, a company that is an expert in designing products and systems up front for successful rapid, large quantity, low cost future manufacturing and as a competitive differentiator to our large traditional prime system integrator partners and also to our government and commercial customers. Kratos’ primary business areas include, virtualized ground systems for satellites and space vehicles including software for command & control (C2) and telemetry, tracking and control (TT&C), jet powered unmanned aerial drone systems, hypersonic vehicles and rocket systems, propulsion systems for drones, missiles, loitering munitions, supersonic systems, space craft and launch systems, C5ISR and microwave electronic products for missile, radar, missile defense, space, satellite, counter UAS, directed energy, communication and other systems, and virtual & augmented reality training systems for the warfighter.
About Ranger
Rancher Government Solutions (RGS) is specifically designed to address the unique security and operational needs of the U.S. Government and military as it relates to application modernization, containers, and Kubernetes.
Rancher is a complete open source software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters at scale, while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads.
RGS supports all Rancher products with U.S. based American citizens who are currently supporting programs across the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies.