Heritage systems and applications are complicating how companies keep pace with evolving conditions in their markets. IT leaders recognize that their organizations need an effective, future-ready approach to digital transformation, starting with application infrastructure modernization. This requires an IT transformation strategy that enables companies to leverage the benefits of cloud services—stretching across public, hybrid, and multi-cloud. Modern, cloud-native applications can bring new capabilities, services, and insights, as well as greater agility and flexibility, to accelerate the attainment of business-critical objectives, driving growth and cost efficiencies. However, moving to a cloud environment can be complicated, involving considerations about how to ensure continuous business operations and unbroken customer service while delivering modernized applications. Other obstacles can include complex security and compliance issues. In addition, not all enterprise data is appropriate for cloud environments, and some will remain on premises. As a result, many companies can struggle with determining which data resides where and lack the expertise to design, implement, and execute an effective cloud strategy.
Container platforms, like Kubernetes, offer a cloud-like experience, whether they’re deployed on a public or private cloud, on premises, or at edge locations. Containers provide a streamlined way to build, test, deploy, and redeploy applications. They provide a standardized configuration across different environments supported by multiple cloud platforms. A well-designed containerization strategy has been shown to help organizations to:
- modernize legacy applications across hybrid or multi-cloud environments
- innovate and respond to rapid market demands through the creation of new, cloud-native applications
- create applications that are both agile and scalable
- provide a standard way to package and deploy applications while optimizing costs
- run applications in a consistent manner across the entire software development lifecycle.
This KPMG and Red Hat sponsored paper, written by Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the biggest challenges to a cloud-ready infrastructure and explores several approaches organizations can take to design and implement a containerization strategy to better manage modern cloud environments.
