Containerization provides benefits like consistent environments, lightweight packages, and efficient resource utilization and isolation. Kubernetes is an open-source platform that provides tools to automate deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containerized applications into logical units called pods and uses labels to identify pods. It provides features like service discovery, load balancing, rolling updates, and self-healing capabilities. Kubernetes aims to provide a platform for automating deployment, scaling and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts.