Simplify Container Management with Portainer From Onboarding to Production | Ep 141

Description

In this episode of @cloudnativefm we speak with Neil Creswell, CEO of Portainer, about the art of simplifying container management — for individual developers, platform teams, and large enterprise fleets. Neil shares Portainer’s vision for removing friction from developer workflows, how teams can balance simplicity with governance and security, and why developer experience must be the primary design constraint for future cloud-native tooling. Why watch: - Hear Portainer’s practical approach to making containers easier to run and manage across Kubernetes and Docker. - Get an exclusive look at two new projects Neil teases: Canine.sh (developer/edge-focused tooling) and KubeSolo.io (single-node Kubernetes for learning & testing). - Learn real-world strategies to reduce operational complexity, cut costs, and speed up developer feedback loops. Topics covered - The problem with “complexity creep” in container stacks - Portainer’s design principles for developer-first tooling - How Canine.sh and KubeSolo.io fit into the ecosystem (what problems they solve) - Advice for platform engineers & SREs: observability, policy, and adoption strategies - Enterprise considerations: multi-cluster management, security, and cost control Key takeaways: - Commercial investment allowed Portainer to scale product development and focus on real customer needs. - The product moved beyond being just a UI overlay — it now tackles the complexity that burns out engineers. - Portainer’s ethos: make container operations simpler, safer, and more manageable for teams. Resources & links - Portainer — https://www.portainer.io - Canine.sh — http://canine.sh/ - KubeSolo — https://www.kubesolo.io/ 👍 Like the video — it helps more people discover these conversations 💬 Comment below: what’s your biggest pain managing containers today? I’ll highlight interesting replies in the next episode. 🔔 Subscribe to @cloudnativefm for weekly deep dives on platform engineering, Kubernetes, and DevOps.