Nirmata announces AI assistant to accelerate Kubernetes policy creation

Bart: First things first, can you say who you are, what your role is, and where you work?

Ritesh: I'm Ritesh Patel, one of the founders at Nirmata. I lead product and technology partnerships.

Bart: What news are you bringing to our audience today?

Ritesh: Last week, we launched AI Platform Engineering Assistant from Nirmata. Today, platform engineers and platform engineering teams are really stretched. They have to learn a lot of new technologies. We feel they can benefit from an AI teammate that can help accelerate ongoing tasks around security, policy, and governance. Our AI platform engineering assistant can help them complete these tasks 10x sooner, giving them more time for ongoing innovation.

Bart: What specific challenges does an AI platform engineering assistant address?

Ritesh: As Nirmata, we are the maintainers of Kyverno. Kyverno is a CNCF incubating project and a very well-adopted policy engine. Many platform engineering teams use Kyverno to enforce policies for security, operations, and automation. With our platform engineering assistant, we can enable rapid generation of validated, tested policies that can cover more use cases.

In addition, we're launching an agent that can accelerate remediation of potential misconfigurations. When you deploy policies into Kubernetes environments, it detects issues and misconfigurations. Typically, platform engineers have to go back to developers or other teams to get violations fixed. However, with our remediator agent, we can rapidly accelerate that process by recommending fixes and even creating pull requests so that developers can simply review and accept them.

These are some initial use cases and capabilities we are starting with. Our goal is to address more use cases going forward.

Bart: And how does this announcement change the landscape compared to what existed before?

Ritesh: There's a lot of buzz about AI and how it can help platform teams or even engineering teams. A lot of AI adoption initially happened with developers writing and generating code. We felt that platform engineers could really benefit from AI because they're very stretched and have to stay on top of many technologies. This was not something we saw in the market. There are a few technologies focused on SREs, but not as much on platform engineers. That's what we're launching, and that's how we are changing the market.

Bart: And for our open source community: Is the Kyverno Platform Engineering Assistant open source? And if so, where does it fit in the CNCF landscape?

Ritesh: Kyverno itself is open source and part of CNCF. We're actually expanding Kyverno beyond just Kubernetes. The latest version has more policy types available and uses CEL (Common Expression Language). It's also getting more popular outside of Kubernetes, such as policies to scan Terraform for authorization policy. Kyverno is expanding, and at Nirmata, we are building tooling on top of it. Initially, we are launching a platform engineering AI assistant, which is not open source, but free to download and use to start with. We will then layer in other agents on top.

Bart: Can you break down Nirmata's business model and pricing structure for teams that are evaluating this solution?

Ritesh: At Nirmata, we have different products. Our entry-level product is Enterprise Kyverno, designed for teams who have already adopted Kyverno but need enterprise support and distribution for peace of mind when deploying Kyverno in mission-critical environments.

On top of that, we have our recently announced AI assistance. We also offer Nirmata Control Hub, which is a dashboard and management plane for Kyverno and policies. Teams can use this to gain visibility into cluster activities, obtain compliance reporting, manage policy exceptions, and handle remediation.

Our pricing typically starts in the 60 to 80K range for the entry-level offering and expands based on enterprise deployment and size. The exact cost can vary depending on the organization.

Bart: When people are exploring this space, which alternative solutions might they be considering alongside yours?

Ritesh: In the Kubernetes landscape, there are two policy engines: Open Policy Agent and Kyverno. Companies could be considering either using Open Policy Agent or using it alongside Kyverno. Some security products bundle Open Policy Agent in their platforms. With Kyverno being open source and free to download, Nirmata is one of the few companies that provide Kyverno-based solutions. The alternatives could include security products that have bundled Open Policy Agent or products from companies that back OPA versus Kyverno.

Bart: What key advantages set your platform engineering AI assistant apart from similar solutions in the market?

Ritesh: The biggest advantage is that it's built around Kyverno. If you've adopted Kyverno, our solution fits well with it. If you've decided to go with another platform engineer or policy engine, then maybe our solution may not be the best. But if you've decided on Kyverno, we are the best out there.

Bart: And looking ahead, what developments can our audience anticipate from Nirmata?

Ritesh: Our vision is to address all the challenges platform engineers face in their ongoing evolution. As they add more capabilities, support AI, MCP servers, inferencing, and other technologies, we will be right there with them, enabling guardrails, governance, and compliance. Through our AI assistant, we will address key challenges around operations, resource optimization, cost optimization, troubleshooting, and automation. Our goal is to help platform engineers be 10x more productive through our AI assistants and solve problems much quicker than they have been able to do in the past.

Bart: I apologize, but the transcript you've provided appears to be incomplete or missing. Could you please share the full transcript segment so I can properly analyze it and apply the hyperlinking guidelines?

Without the actual transcript text, I cannot:

1. Identify terms to hyperlink

2. Apply the markdown linking guidelines

3. Provide a meaningful answer

If you can provide the complete transcript segment, I'll be happy to help you create a hyperlinked version following the specified guidelines.

Ritesh: They can visit us through our website at Nirmata, where we have all the information. They can contact us through our website or reach out via customersuccess@nirmata.com or info@nirmata.com. We are also very prominent in the Kyverno community. We are active in the Kyverno Slack channel and participate in events like KubeCon, so they can see us at any of these forums.