Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open-source container orchestration platform originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It automates the deployment, scaling, and management of application containers, ensuring that applications run smoothly in various environments. Kubernetes organizes containers into units called Pods, which can contain one or more containers sharing resources. Its robust features and extensive community support have made it the de facto standard for container orchestration, enabling developers to efficiently manage complex applications and microservices architectures across clusters of machines.