For SMBs and smaller dev shops kicking off their forays into container development, not to mention customer deployments, the simplified cost models make it more

For SMBs and smaller dev shops kicking off their forays into container development, not to mention customer deployments, the simplified cost models make it more management friendly and more understandable to non-IT actors. Whether it is absolutely cheaper than GCE or whatever, and if master management is a requirement, is a separate comparison based on the solution. Cutting out the management node costs removes a barrier to entry and creates a more streamlined product. Oh, it also makes their Kubernetes services usable within the free credits they give out on Azure via their MSDN subscriptions... so suddenly millions of devs can use AKS for demos and temp-hosting "for free", which is huge in creating mindshare in the Enterprise...