Heptio

Heptio was an American software company focused on enterprise Kubernetes. It was founded in 2016 by Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, two of the original co-founders of the Kubernetes project, and was based in Seattle, Washington. The company offered professional services, training, and a range of open-source tools to help enterprises deploy and operate Kubernetes clusters.

Among its most notable open-source projects were Ark, a backup and disaster recovery tool for Kubernetes, which was later renamed Velero after VMware's acquisition, and Contour, an Envoy-based ingress controller used to manage external access to Kubernetes services. Heptio also contributed educational resources and tooling to accelerate enterprise adoption of Kubernetes.

Heptio's work helped popularize Kubernetes-centric workflows and provided early, practical tooling for organizations seeking to run Kubernetes at scale. The company attracted venture investment to support its growth and ecosystem involvement, emphasizing training and hands-on guidance for enterprise customers.

In 2018, VMware announced plans to acquire Heptio for up to approximately $550 million, in a move to strengthen its Kubernetes portfolio. The acquisition closed in 2019, with Heptio’s engineers joining VMware. Ark’s relocation to Velero and Contour’s ongoing development were integrated into VMware’s open-source and cloud-native efforts, while the Heptio brand itself was phased out.

Today, Heptio is remembered as an influential early player in the cloud-native and Kubernetes ecosystem, contributing foundational tooling and practices that shaped subsequent enterprise Kubernetes offerings.