As the name suggests, containerization involves packaging your app as a container so it can be easily transported between clouds, computers, and data centers. Containerization revolutionizes business operations because it allows companies to reduce complexity in software development and deployment processes, deploy new applications quickly, increase productivity and cut costs. For example, containers enable companies to ship code faster and boost app performance by standardizing the underlying infrastructure.
This post will explore seven benefits of containerization for businesses to help you decide if it’s right for your company.
Efficient Use of Resources
When you containerize your applications, you can take advantage of shared resources. You can share a single database, for example, with several different applications. This reduces the amount of money that would have been spent on additional hardware and software licenses.
You can also share resources across companies or industries using Docker containers to package your code for deployment in AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Microsoft Azure WebJobs, or others. This makes it easier to run your code on multiple cloud platforms without worrying about compatibility issues between their various flavors of Linux operating systems or Windows Servers.
Simplified Development and Deployment
With containerization, you can focus on your application. You don’t have to worry about what hosting infrastructure or OS you’re using. You don’t even need to know how to configure and set up the containers; this is all taken care of by an orchestration tool like Kubernetes or Mesos Marathon.
Instead of worrying about all these things, your developers can focus on writing code and developing their applications—without having to deal with complicated concepts such as networking or storage management!
However, you will still need to manage the orchestration tools. So, if you use Kubernetes for containerization, you must manage it. If you don’t have or don’t want an in-house team, you can seek managed Kubernetes services. Leveraging managed Kubernetes services will ensure that you don’t have to worry about anything from hosting your application to managing resources, as everything will be taken care of by the managed service provider.
Extensible and Portable Apps
Containerization allows you to deploy the same app on multiple servers. With containerization, you don’t need to worry about operating systems and hardware configurations. You can run a single image everywhere. This opens up many possibilities for extensibility and portability in your apps.
Containerization makes it easy for developers to move their projects between clouds or data centers. All they need is an access token from one cloud provider, which they can then use to connect with any other provider.
Cost-Effectively Scale Up and Down
Containerization is a cost-effective way to scale up and down. Containerized applications are more easily scalable than traditional ones, even if you don’t have the resources on hand to build a new server or application environment in response to demand.
You can start small, then quickly expand when needed without any additional investment in hardware or software resources necessary. If demand drops again, you can just as quickly scale back down – all that’s necessary is some storage space for your container images!
Flexibility to Choose the Right Cloud
For your business, choosing the right cloud is as important as choosing the right partner. The right partner can help you achieve growth and success, but the wrong one could leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Do you know what other things are like that? Containerization. It’s all about finding the suitable container for your application or data, depending on how much of each resource you need and how much money you want to spend on it.
And when it comes to containers, there are plenty of options—and more than enough companies offer them up for free! But like any good investment opportunity, some containers are better than others, and some companies offer better deals than others on their own services.
The good thing is that containers and related tools work well with all the primary public cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Moreover, you can also opt to host the containers on a hybrid cloud. Hence, you get flexibility in selecting the right cloud that can address your business needs.
Faster App Performance
Containers are lightweight and fast. They load in less than a second, regardless of the size of your application. They also quickly start because they don’t need to boot up like traditional virtual machines.
When it comes to running applications, containers are highly flexible and efficient in resource usage—they can be scaled up or down as needed without affecting performance or availability. Containers are also portable. You can deploy them anywhere there’s an internet connection, which means you can easily move them from one cloud provider to another or even run them locally on-premises if needed.
More Secure Applications
In a nutshell, containerization makes it easier to keep your applications secure. Because containers are isolated from the host operating system and other containers, they provide an additional layer of security by default. This means that even if one application is compromised, it cannot access any other applications running on that same machine.
In fact, because of this isolation feature called ‘namespaces,’ even if an attacker could gain root-level access inside a containerized app, it would only be able to affect that particular container instead of being able to compromise the entire system. And since each container runs as its own user account with its own permissions and file structure, there’s less chance something terrible could happen in another part of your system anyway!
Conclusion
Containerized software runs in a virtual environment and is one of the most efficient ways to host applications on the cloud. Why? Because containers allow you to use fewer servers than traditional virtualization methods, making them more cost-effective. This makes containerization an ideal solution for businesses looking to cut costs while optimizing their IT infrastructure and services.
Overall, containerization can help you optimize your development processes and make the most of your cloud budget by reducing time spent on deployment or scaling operations. This technology is still relatively new, but it’s already proven valuable for businesses looking to streamline their processes and scale up their application infrastructure. As organizations embrace containerization as part of their digital transformation initiatives, we believe this technology will become increasingly important in the coming years.
