Highlights:
- An August 2021 Gartner Report says that 90% of all organizations worldwide will use containerized applications in production by 2026.
- Containers are an effective approach for developers to bundle and deploy their applications because they are compact and offer a uniform, portable software environment that enables applications to run and scale everywhere.
The world of technology has witnessed three different stages of revolutions. It includes the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific and Technical Revolution and the contemporary Digital Revolution.
What is digital revolution?
Digital Revolution is transitioning from mechanical or analog electronic technologies to digital electronics to store, transfer and use information.
The Digital Revolution period, which began in the 1980s, is still in effect!
It is said that the “Information Era” started with the Digital Revolution. This marks the beginning of the so-called “Digital Revolution,” which began in the second part of the 20th century. The development of the internet and the rise of personal computers kick-started owing to digital revolution! You can also name it is as the “Third Industrial Revolution”!
The growing use of digital computers and the growth of digital information storage are two examples of the digital revolution. More sophisticated computer systems have emerged because of digital revolution.
However, why has it evolved into a revolution?
Many global businesses have gained access to digital technologies in the past two decades, making radical changes to their operations; it is gradually spreading out and increasing productivity across a wide variety of domains, sectors and industries.
Digital technologies have been widely adopted because of several events, forever altering how we exchange and use information.
Hence, a strategic framework is essential for digital technology and application modernization is its significant component.
The process of modernizing applications
Application modernization enables you to expand upon daily used, successful IT investments. It also enables you to continually add value while managing an IT environment that is dynamic and quick to change. With Modernized Applications, you can transform your essential business applications, procedures and infrastructure from the mainframe to the Cloud and quickly innovate with not many risks.
Legacy, Optimize and Modernize are the three phases of the application modernization process. Knowing where you are in the process of application modernization can help you plan your migration strategy.
- Legacy phase
Your path to the cloud may start by migrating a monolithic (old) application and replatforming it on managed Amazon Web Services also known as AWS services. - Optimize phase
It offers significant advantages when a re-platformed program is upgraded with infrastructure as code (IAC) and automated CI/CD. Additional benefits of the optimization phase include:
- Accelerated time to market
- Rapid innovation
- Reduced risks
- Streamline phase
An application is containerized on a cloud-native microservices architecture during this stage. Cost optimization can be achieved during this time because:
- It has reduced costs and maintenance time
- The use of autoscaling lowers resources. Resource consumption is optimized through container orchestration (using Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS or AWS Fargate).
- There are no licensing fees or very little of them.
A report from Gartner from August 2021 says that 90% of all organizations worldwide will use containerized applications in production by 2026. This is up from 40% in 2021. Additionally, up from less than 10% in 2020, 20% of all enterprise applications will run in containers by 2026.
Containerization at its best: Containers’ function in application modernization
Modern programs are automatically deployed at scale using containers, promoting cost reductions. They offer a uniform method for combining an application’s dependencies, configurations and code into a single object.
Containers are an effective approach for developers to bundle and deploy their applications because they are compact and offer a uniform, portable software environment that enables applications to run and scale everywhere.
These containers run as resource-isolated process that share an operating system installed on the server. Regardless of the environment, they offer swift, dependable and consistent deployments.
Common applications for containers:
- Quickly begin jobs and dynamically scale them in response to demand.
- Standardize the testing, deploying and updating of code.
- Scale up machine learning models quickly for any platform’s training and execution.
- Applications can be moved more quickly to the Cloud.
- Make it simpler to scale and develop Applications quickly.
How containers aid in cost optimization:
- Minimal or no license fees: Containers can be easily accessed without any extravagant fee structures.
- Costs and time spent on maintenance are cut: There is no need for extra configuration management tools.
- Orchestration for containers: Aligns workload-specific requirements to reduce costs with Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, or AWS Fargate.
- Fewer materials are needed: Heavy Operating Software or OS images don’t need to be duplicated when using containers. On the same hardware, various applications are active. Instead of requiring multiple hosts to deploy apps, they use a single host.
- Autoscaling: To keep resource costs under control, use measurements (Amazon CloudWatch or Kubernetes Metrics Server) or triggered events with Kubernetes Event-driven Autoscaling (KEDA).
- Downscaling: By terminating superfluous Pods on the weekends and throughout the evenings, Kubernetes Pod hours are optimized.
- You may optimize prices using Amazon EC2 purchase options based on your needs. The possibilities include Spot Instances, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and others.
- Current CloudOps: Reduces costs and saves time by automating, monitoring and managing workloads and containers.
- Rightsizing: the requests and limits for CPU and memory that each container in a Kubernetes Pod may use.
But why should you build applications on AWS?
Well, by providing a wide range of services and functionalities, AWS helps businesses create cutting-edge applications, with ease.
The AWS serverless services let you design and run applications without putting a lot of thought into it! Your developers concentrate on innovation rather than getting side-tracked by running the underlying operations and infrastructure.
The Microservices architecture!
In this contemporary architecture, an application is created as a group of services. Each microservice manages specific duties while accommodating an application functionality. Because they are loosely coupled, components can be independently deployed and scaled. The integrated building pieces of AWS services facilitate a microservices architecture.
How to begin modernizing your applications:
Here are the key challenges:
- Evaluating the worth of current applications
- Following the guidelines of the AWS Well-Architected Framework for hosting architecture and tooling
- Choosing where and how to start
- Inadequate pre- and post-migration requirements for skills
- Employee and business stakeholder resistance to change
Get started: AWS Cost Optimization Assessment
Organizations are under pressure from the present business climate to identify cost savings immediately. Utilizing containerization to update your infrastructure can lower expenses while enhancing application capabilities.
Just starting your migration to AWS?
You may experience more AWS benefits earlier in your cloud journey if you incorporate containers into your migration strategy.
The logical next step to help you take advantage of AWS’s cost-saving, scalability and agility advantages may be containerization.
To sum up
In today’s dynamic environment, it is clear that enterprises require faster operations and faster services.
In contrast, legacy items are typically more expensive and labor-intensive. Organizations can benefit from the new and varied opportunities through modernization by utilizing the new IT architecture.
The finest aspect is that it can be done inside and in accordance with the limitations imposed by the organization.
Therefore, by modernizing their legacy applications while considering the methodologies and obstacles stated above, organizations can achieve the digital transformation they desire.
