Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system. It is designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Containers are a lightweight way of packaging and deploying software, they bundle all the necessary dependencies and configurations into one package making it easy to move and run the application on any infrastructure. Kubernetes provides a way to orchestrate these containers and manage them at scale.

Kubernetes provides a number of features that make it useful for managing containerized applications at scale, including:

1. Automatic scaling: Kubernetes can automatically scale the number of containers running an application based on demand.
2. Automatic failover: Kubernetes can automatically detect and recover from failures in the application, by restarting failed containers or rescheduling them to healthy nodes.
3. Load balancing: Kubernetes can automatically distribute incoming traffic across multiple containers running an application.
4. Self-healing: Kubernetes can automatically detect and recover from failures in the application, by restarting failed containers or rescheduling them to healthy nodes.
5. Namespaces: Kubernetes allows you to segment your cluster and create different environments such as development, staging, and production.
6. Configuration management: Kubernetes allows you to declaratively manage the configuration of your containerized applications, making it easy to roll out changes and roll them back if needed.

Kubernetes is widely used by organizations of all sizes and is supported by all major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP and others.

In summary, Kubernetes is a powerful tool that allows developers and operations teams to easily manage and scale containerized applications, making it an essential part of modern cloud infrastructure.