Four compelling reasons to use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Management overhead, inflexibility and lack of automation all stifle application development. Containers help by moving applications and their dependencies between environments, and Kubernetes orchestrates containerisation effectively. But there’s another piece to the puzzle. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the best way to simplify and streamline Kubernetes so you can scale your app development with real confidence and agility. Read on to discover more key benefits and why AKS is the advanced technology tool you need to supercharge your IT department, drive business growth and give your company a competitive edge over its rivals.

Why worry about the complexity of container orchestration, when you can use AKS?

1. Accelerated app development

75 percent of developer's time is typically spent on bug-fixing. AKS removes much of the time-sink (and headache) of debugging by handling the following aspects of your development infrastructure:

• Auto upgrades
• Patching
• Self-healing

Through AKS, container orchestration is simplified, saving you time and enabling your developers to remain more productive. It’s a way to breathe life into your application development by combatting one of developer’s biggest time-sinks.

2. Supports agile project management

As this PWC report shows, agile projects yield strong results and are typically 28 percent more successful than traditional projects. This is another key benefit to AKS – it supports agile development programs, such as continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery/continuous deployment (CD) and dev-ops. This is done through integration with Azure DevOps, ACR, Azure Active Directory and Monitoring. An example of this is a developer who puts a container into a repository, moves the builds into Azure Container Registry (ACR), and then uses AKS to launch the workload.

3. Security and compliance done right

Cyber security must be a priority for all businesses moving forward. Last year, almost half of UK businesses suffered a cyber-attack and, according to IBM’s study, 60 percent of data breaches were caused by insiders. The threat is large, and it often comes from within. AKS protects your business by enabling administrators to tailor access to Azure Active Directory (AD) and identity and group identities. When people only have the access they need, the threat from internal teams is greatly reduced. You can also rest assured that AKS is totally compliant. AKS meets the regulatory requirements of System and Organisation Controls (SOC), as well as being compliant with ISO, HIPAA and HITRUST.

4. Use only the resources you need

AKS is a fully flexible system that adapts to use only the resources you need. Additional processing power is supported via graphic processing units (GPUs) - processor intensive operations, such as scientific computations, enables on-top processing power. If you need more resources, it’s as simple as clicking a button and letting the elasticity of Azure container instances do the rest. When you only use the resources you need, your software (and your business) enjoys the following benefits:

• Reduced cost - no extra GPUs need to be bought and integrated onsite.
• Faster start-up speed compared to onsite hardware and software which takes time to set-up.
• Easier scaling – get more done now without worrying about how to manage resources.

Scale at speed with AKS

The world of applications moves fast. For example, 6140 Android apps were released in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Ambitious companies can’t afford the risk of slowing down. Free up time and simplify the application of containerisation by implementing AKS and take your software development to the next level. To find out how we get things done, check out Nordcloud’s approach to DevOps and agile application delivery. Feel free to contact us if you need help in planning or executing your container workload.