Container Technology and its Application in Business
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Every day, IT continues to cope with the extreme pressure exerted on it by the ever-increasing demands of the organization. These demands necessitate improved agility and speed of delivery of modern functionalities to the line of business. Furthermore, one of the major causes of this pressure is the deployment of modern and sophisticated application code at the frequency and rapidity that’s needed by basic digital transformation.
What is containerization in IT?
This problem is complicated and heightened by infrastructural challenges. These challenges entail the time it takes to provide the development team with a platform or the complexity associated with the development of a test system that imitates the production environment. Humanitec affirms that dividing applications into smaller compartments and operating each compartment in containers often coincide. The blueprint of modern applications has enabled many businesses and software projects to make regular adjustments to running software and upgrading them to suit changes in demand and objectives.
Containerization is an IT strategy that involves the use of container software to compartmentalize application processes. These containers are lightweight components that package an application, its dependencies, and its instructions in a single image and operate in isolated user space on a conventional operating system on customary servers or in a virtualized space. By isolation, we’re referring to speed. Containers are miniature entities compared to virtual machines, making their deployment much faster. Isolation, in this context, also means versatility since containers are compact and can easily transit between various platforms and cloud vendors. And more importantly, isolation, in this aspect, connotes responsiveness since start-up times are short.
In plain terms, containerization is essentially about encasing software code together with all its vital aspects ( libraries, blueprints, and other dependencies) so that they are segregated from others in its container. The essence of this is to enable the application present in the container to be moved and operated consistently regardless of the environment or infrastructure’s operating system. The container functions as a computing space enclosing the application and maintaining its independence while making it a completely functional and suitable computing space.
Containers serve as an alternative to coding on a single operating system. This has complicated application transfer since the code might not be well suited to the new environment. Consequently, this might expose the code to bugs, errors, breaches, and glitches that require several troubleshoots, thereby consuming time and decreasing productivity. When applications are packaged in containers that can be easily transferred across platforms and frameworks, such applications can be used on any platform it is transferred to since it encases everything that’s required for its successful operation.
Learn more about the differences between Docker, Kubernetes and OpenShift.
Sectors Where Containers Are Effectively Used
According to Red Hat, the concept of process isolation became popularized when Docker introduced Docker Engine in 2013, and it set a standard for container use with methods that were easy to implement for developers. This catalyzed the adoption of container technology.
Startup Businesses
More than ever, we’re witnessing a great inflow of startup businesses. Nevertheless, very few of these startups live to survive the test of time, and this is not new. The reasons for their failure are vast, part of which could be their inability to deliver quickly due to inadequate upgrades and slow adaptation. From this, we can infer that for a company to thrive, deliver and compete well in its niche, it has to adopt innovative and trending technology. Containerization is among these technologies. What is its usefulness in this sector?
- Execution of Innovative Strategies.
Generally, startups have to deal with faster delivery to evolve and adapt quickly to modern conditions. Containers simplify the introduction of modern features and strategies. Also, it can revert to the former version quickly if required. Containers save startup businesses the time of waiting for the virtual machine to boot up the operating system, making strategy implementation easy.
- Developing Consistency in Business Space.
Among the major challenges that a startup business encounters while developing an application is the disparity in the environment between development, quality assurance, and production. Issues that are considered insignificant can lead to a lot of problems. When containerization is adopted, the environment in which an application function in production is the same environment where it was tested. A detailed and consistent environment makes it easy to pinpoint problems and monitor the application.
Medium-Sized Enterprises
When a business survives its early years and now starts to expand either by increasing the size of its building or by establishing branches at different locations, its IT strategy has to improve too. When containers have exceeded the initial stages of innovation and adoption, it is appropriate for mid-market enterprises to improve their efforts to obtain more benefits from this technology.
Recently, there has been a spike in the delivery of containers and their ease of use. This development, coupled with the stable features and the distinct application programming interface, has made containers the perfect technological strategy for medium-sized IT companies.
- Cloud Transition
Several Medium-sized and even small-sized enterprises depend almost completely on on-premise technology. Nevertheless, since containers function in a cloud-usual manner, regardless of the underlying framework, organizations that rely significantly on on-premise software can obtain cloud-like performance without moving to another platform.
Hence, if an organization containerizes its workload and decides to store them on-premise, such an organization will operate more effectively and productively because it would use fewer resources and maximize present investments. Furthermore, transitioning to a cloud platform will be easy since the containers operate the same way, irrespective of where they’re hosted. In essence, medium-size enterprises will enjoy several benefits from containers at each phase of the cloud period.
- Maintaining Operations With No Downtime
For a business that competes, downtime signifies more than just a temporary halt in business operations in today’s digital space. If an end user can’t access your services because your system is down, they’ll patronize your counterparts. For Small-sized and Medium-sized enterprises, every customer matters, and each loss is noticeable. The framework of containers is essentially beneficial in continuous operations because it provides an effective way to distribute applications into separate containers.
Consequently, containers can be placed on different hardware or virtual machines, on-premise, or even in the cloud. This fluidity is very effective at handling workload.
Large Enterprises
Irrespective of the type, level, and potential audience, a business must be able to adapt to modern technology. This is essential for business growth, although it isn’t entirely easy. Some well-established enterprises are rooted in their legacy technology systems which manage essential business operations and make it hard to replace them with newer technologies. However, with appropriate planning and execution, containers can serve as a tool for relieving businesses from customary systems to achieve the digital transition.
- Containerization of Customary Applications
The motive behind containerizing legacy applications is the need to achieve portability, upgrading, and swift responsiveness. Furthermore, containerization enables these legacy technologies to coexist with newer technologies and even support them. Eventually, existing applications must be refactored to provide the systems with the necessary flexibility needed to evolve and welcome modernization. To achieve this, everything required to set up an existing app should be included to bolster the container concept. Technical feasibility, the level, and estimated business profits should be considered.
Data Protection For Containers
Containers are transitioning into production usage; hence they are tasked with modern applications that support vital operational functions. This results in the transformation of containers from just short-term throwaway resources into major business infrastructures that demand continuous data storage. Therefore, container-based applications have become an entity that requires class protection for seamless business continuity, compliance, and security reasons.
Sometimes, IT professionals find it arduous to effectively protect these container-based applications because container environments operate differently from the physical and virtual space that these professionals are familiar with. This implies that they have to come up with a different approach in this case.
Effective Practices For Container Data Protection
Due to container maturation, some organizations might start finding it difficult to understand the unique framework of containers. Solving this problem significantly depends on the type of business and approach. Fostering an effective container data protection strategy depends on the following:
- Architecture – The platform that is employed to protect the Kubernetes application has to automatically locate all the application segments operating on your cluster and manage the application as a single entity.
- Recoverability – Data management platforms always permit users to restore application components whenever and wherever they want them. The approach had to make restoring easy and effective by enabling users to determine the appropriate point of time copy of the application.
- Security – This focuses on identity and access control. Role-based access control must be set up. Also, encryption methods must be implemented at rest and in transit to ascertain that data is secure whenever it is out of the computing space.
- Operations – It is vitally important that a Kubernetes customary backup platform should be utilized to scale and provide operation teams with adequate workflow capabilities while satisfying compliance and management requirements.
The architecture of modern IT infrastructure is not homogeneous. These are virtualization, cloud and container environments, applications, databases, or even employees’ devices. There is a lot of it! Without any doubt, containerization has proven to be an effective IT strategy in several aspects of an organization. If you would like to know how Storware allows you to secure container environments, just contact us.
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