By: Terry Brennan, Managing Director
Driving to fast, stable, secure, and reliable software delivery
If you are involved with software development or operations, you have likely heard about container technology. It holds great promise, but at the same time introduces a new ecosystem of technologies and additional complexities.
The need for faster, predictable, and agile delivery has become critical. Meeting those needs is not a simple task. With containers, the world has become more complex with many new components required to deliver and operate successfully. They impact everything including runtime, management, structure, and operations.
The appropriate use of containers can enable success by providing the flexibility and pipeline velocity required to meet the new business expectations.
The Why
Containers can dramatically improve software delivery speed, platform independence, resource utilization, and process reliability. They are a great path forward for organizations in today’s accelerating world but will require a shift in thinking and a commitment to learning. Here’s why.
Business pressures and agile cycles are increasing the required release frequency for delivering features. Lean thinking is inspiring new ways to deliver and interact that supports concepts like continuous flow. These developments are pushing organizations to find new ways to deliver software such as agile, DevOps, microservices, and containers.
Consider these stats. Per Accelerate’s 2019 State of DevOps survey, firms that have reached the highest level (Elite Performer) in software development with DevOps are deploying code 208 times more often with commit to deploy lead time more than 100 times faster and 7 times lower change failure rate. Moreover, they are recovering from incidents a staggering 2,604 times faster than those at the lowest level.
For companies that need to keep up or be left behind, containers provide an essential element needed to achieve the improvements.
The Difference
Containers change the way we work. They enable many benefits over previous technology generations such being they are immutable, extremely fast, and very efficient.
Bare metal: It used to be that you had to secure a physical server with all the necessary hardware and software to run the application. This was very manual, typically slow, and an inefficient use of resources.
Virtualization: Virtualization abstracted away the tie to the physical server. There is still a physical server underneath, but now a hypervisor sits on top and manages virtual servers. This broke the tie to the physical server, allowed faster turnaround, and improved resource utilization.
Containerization: Containerization abstracted away the tie to the OS. There is still physical server and/or virtualization software underneath with a host OS, but now a container runtime sits on top and manages containers. This allows the dynamic characteristics needed in DevOps and an even more efficient utilization of resources.
Ready for Containers?
Has your company not explored containers yet? Are you experimenting with containers, but only in siloed groups? Get started with an understanding of the containers ecosystem elements and how they fit together. Understand the roles the elements play and how they are supported. To learn more, we invite you to watch our recent webinar, Comprehending the Container Eco-System.
If you’re trying to figure out how containers fit into your DevOps world there are many aspects to consider. Our Continuous Containers approach helps clear the fog as organizations try to meet the modern demands for faster cycles and move towards a container footing, enabling speed and agility to be executed throughout the lifecycle in an integrated and automated fashion. This requires technology, process, people, and cultural changes.
For any firm seeking DevOps maturity, containers may be a successful enabler. Yet, configuring them correctly, ensuring they are secure, and deploying them successfully are complex operations.
Nevertheless, the benefits in speed, agility, and efficiency, as well as resource reduction, make containers absolutely worth the effort and expense. Orasi’s experts have significant experience in leading companies from strategy to fruition with all aspects of DevOps, including containerization. We would be happy to explore your particular situation with you. To learn more, we invite you to watch our recent webinar, Comprehending the Container Eco-System and contact us www.orasi.com or 678-819-5300.
