How containerized applications boost business growth

When it comes to applications and other software, businesses need to balance innovation, security and user experience against the cost of development. However, too many are stuck with legacy software that isn’t suitable for their needs and legacy development processes that increase the cost of building software without increasing its value. This is why more and more companies are embracing containerised applications to improve development productivity, time to market and innovation without sacrificing security or reliability. In this blog, we will not only explain what containers are, but show you how they can benefit your business.

What are containers?

Containers, in this context, are just another way to build and deploy applications. Instead of building monolithic applications that run in their entirety on servers, containerised applications are made up of Lego-like building blocks called containers. Each container is a standalone package of software that embodies an element of the overall application. Containerised applications take advantage of the scalability of cloud infrastructure, coping with peaks and troughs in demand. They also move quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another, for example moving from a development environment to a full-scale production environment.

How containerized applications benefit your business?

Software is not simple. To work properly, it relies on everything doing its job at the right time. With multiple applications running on the same operating system, you may find that some don’t mesh together well. Containerisation reduces this risk by letting you build, test, update and integrate individual containers separately. In this way containerisation supports a DevOps approach to development. In the past, this was done through virtual machines. But they take up a lot of storage, aren’t so portable and are difficult to update. What’s more they don’t provide the same level of continuous integration and delivery of service that containers do.

Here are three other ways that containerisation can benefit your business:

1. Agility

Containers make it easier to manage application operations and updates. For the best results, you need to work with a specialist IT partner to provide automated container orchestration. This means you can reap the benefits of your containerised applications quickly and effectively. While containerisation can sound complicated, with the right help, it can revolutionise the way you think about IT.

2. Scalability

You can meet growing demand and business need by scaling all or parts of your containerised applications almost instantly. You can do this by using software solutions like Openshift on Azure. Openshift on Azure is a free managed container orchestration service, hosted on Azure. It allows you to scale your application infrastructure efficiently.

3. Portability

One of the greatest benefits of containerisation is portability. You can reduce or avoid integration issues that slow your day-to-day business activities in a traditional computer environment. You can even stay productive if you move your application onto another device, cloud platform or operating system.

Make your business more productive and scalable with Openshift on Azure

With Openshift on Azure, you can manage and scale your containerised applications easily. This free, secure app allows you to boost your DevOps ambitions by accelerating containerised application development. So, if you want to develop and scale your IT infrastructure with confidence, look no further than Openshift on Azure. Feel free to contact us if you need help in planning or executing your container workload.