Microsoft announced today it is acquiring open-source software development shop Deis from Engine Yard. Financial terms of the deal have not been publicly disclosed.

Engine Yard itself acquired OpDemand, which is the original company behind Deis, in April 2015 to help improve its container services, which is exactly the same thing Microsoft now wants to do with the company.

OpDemand was originally started in 2011, and Deis evolved significantly over its short lifespan from primarily being a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology to being a leading Kubernetes services vendor.

The Deis platforms include Steward, which is a Kubernetes-native services broker, as well as a workflow app deployment and management platform. Perhaps most significantly, Deis is the leader of the open-source Helm project, which has emerged to become the leading project for Kubernetes package management.

Microsoft Already Active in Kubernetes Space

Microsoft has been active in the Kubernetes space as well, hiring Brendan Burns in July 2016. Burns is credited with helping to create Kubernetes during his employment as a Google engineer. With Deis, Microsoft is looking to further expand its Kubernetes and open-source participation.

"In addition to their container expertise, the Deis team brings a depth of open source technology experience – furthering Microsoft’s commitments to improve developer productivity and to provide choice and flexibility for our customers everywhere," Scott Guthrie - Executive Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

"We expect Deis' technology to make it even easier for customers to work with our existing container portfolio including Linux and Windows Server Containers, Hyper-V Containers and Azure Container Service, no matter what tools they choose to use," Guthrie continued.

Gabe Monroy, CTO of Deis, is optimistic about the move to Microsoft and how it will help further his company's open-source mission.

"Over the years, we have worked hard to be open, reliable, and dependable open source maintainers," Monroy wrote in a blog post. "From our new home at Microsoft you should expect nothing less."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at ServerWatch and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.