Containers are a critical technology for development operations and an integral piece of a business’s digital transformation. When companies are looking to engage in a digital transformation effort, one of the first moves they should make is to migrate from costly virtualized instances to lightweight containers for their enterprise applications. Small or large, application production, maintenance, and deployment can be streamlined, and more companies are making the switch than ever before. Yet, before looking at the benefits, let’s answer the question, “what is a container?”
What are containers?
Containers are the animating force behind application virtualization. They help package code, dependencies, configurations, and more for operating systems from small microservices to large applications. The idea is to streamline application maintenance and provide consistency around version control. In a way, containers are similar to virtual machines or servers in their use; however, they do not need to contain OS-level assets, presenting a much more lightweight, portable system to deliver faster results with lower overhead costs. In many cases, developers can cluster containers together, utilizing an orchestrator like Docker or Kubernetes to manage them.
In other words, containers give businesses the agility to scale their applications for whatever they need and deploy them to cloud, server, or hybrid environments, saving time and resources.
How do containers improve business?
Containers can be immensely beneficial for any digital enterprise; they save money, resources, and satisfy the needs of your team on both the development and deployment side. Whatever the needs are of your business applications, containers can meet them efficiently. Here are just a few ways we see containers aiding organizations with the process of application production and management.
Save Money/Resources
Instead of switching out integrations and purchasing new hardware, containers present a unique environment for optimizing the servers and hardware your organization already has. Additionally, they’re open source and require no acquisition costs, vendor lock-ins, or licensing complications.
IT-Approved
Containers have become the preferred technology for IT staff and modern developers. If a company is looking to hire the best talent the industry offers, they need to approach them with the technology they’re already privy too. And, for talent that isn’t up to snuff, training is incredibly manageable, especially for staff with years of experience working on current virtual machines and applications. We can’t say it’s an “easy” transition, but we can say learning the new environment will be worth the efforts and provide your IT team incredible value.
Fast/Flexible Deployment
One of the biggest factors in using new technology is the pace of deployment; no matter what industry you’re in, quick turnaround on application changes and improvements is critical to staying ahead of the curve and gaining the edge over industry competitors. With faster deployment than other technologies, containers allow for swift application rollouts to guarantee your company maintains consistent development.
Deployment is not only quick but flexible as well. Whether your organization employs .NET, JavaScript, or any other programming framework, containers are not confined to the boundaries of a specific framework. There’s no need to buy new servers, learn new systems, or migrate to a new cloud; whatever you currently have in place is suitable for using containers.
Stability and Consistency
Application stability and consistent user experience are paramount to customer satisfaction; by using containers for your applications, your IT team can expect uniform environments between testing, staging, and final deployment. This type of stability ensures that your developers are able to take a project from test to production, avoiding bugs, and poor software releases.
In today’s digital climate, containers are the gateway to gaining a competitive edge when it comes to application development. The benefits expand far out from general IT advantages into the realm of user experience, digital experience, and customer engagement as a whole. As a leader in helping businesses make the leap in digital transformation, XTIVIA is a premier provider of container solutions, and our experts can help your organization seamlessly move from bulky servers and virtual machines to exceptional application production with containers.
If you’re on the fence about moving your business to containers, reach out to us! We’ve helped companies of all sizes and industries navigate their way through migration, and we can help you too.