The cloud is not the end, but the beginning. Starting a quick journey to the cloud brings benefits to your business. However, to get more benefits and reduce costs it is necessary to adopt a cloud-native mindset, which means going beyond, using the maximum value of cloud computing.
Kubernetes, a system designed by Google and maintained by the
Cloud Native Computing Foundation, for example, is much more than a container orchestration solution. Many experts consider Kubernetes the new Linux since much evolution is to happen in this system.
Nowadays all organizations use Linux, but not all organizations use Kubernetes. Possibly we will reach the point where all companies will start using kubernetes, just as they use Linux today. You must be imagining technical reasons for using Kubernetes. They exist and there are many, however, there are also very relevant business reasons regarding the use of this system.
Keeping Innovation FlowingIt is increasingly important to innovate within companies - corporate innovation - but this innovation is very difficult and has several challenges. Within enterprise innovation, it is necessary to integrate existing software quickly and also to discard solutions and ideas quickly. Kubernetes accelerates this time by reducing operational load, which is the bottleneck in many companies.
Focus on User ExperienceThe user is at the center of everything we do - or should be at least. However, the user experience is not just "look-and-feel" or "how" things work, but also "if" they work. Many solutions are architected as a house of cards in which the first error causes several other features to be affected. With Kubernetes it is possible to maximize the isolation of features and reduce the impact spectrum when something goes wrong as well as reduce recovery time.
PortabilityNowadays nobody thinks about losing the phone number or WhatsApp. In the past, if you wanted to switch carriers - for better or cheaper service - you would lose the number. Nowadays there is number portability. Kubernetes is one of the solutions that enable the portability of cloud-provider - Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. This portability is already real and used in solutions like WAZE - Using Spinnaker.
Maintaining Business ValueFrom time to time it is very common in IT industries to have the need to re-write a number of ZERO applications in view of better architecture and more robust solutions. With Kubernetes this need is less, since its solution is more portable and, consequently, the erosion of the business value becomes much smaller. This process allows your business to be ported without having to be rewritten.
Maximizing Value - Large Uses Case CoverKubernetes is not only for backend solutions, but it is also possible to run machine learning (ML) and Big Data workloads using Spark, for example, and more. In addition, there are many other Serverless frameworks on top of Kubernetes, such as Google
knative.
Strategic Freedom and Cost ReductionWith the possibility of portability, it is possible to run solutions in 1 or multiple clouds, thus taking the maximum value from each supplier, and can also migrate to other clouds when the cost becomes more interesting. This way, your business stays in a strategic position rather than being held hostage by cloud providers.
Time to Market ReductionOne of the principles of modern innovation through Lean Startup is to reduce time to market, that is, to put ideas and solutions out faster. Kubernetes helps us with this because through the system we can have shorter deploys cycles with less infrastructure overhead.
Your journey to the cloud should not stop after Lift and Shift. Kubernetes is much more than a container orchestrator. If you do not want to make another digital transformation in 5 years, it is very important that you consider Kubernetes as a very strategic solution to your business.
Cheers,
Diego Pacheco
https://diegopacheco.github.io/
