Enabling Choice
When you have a standardized container structure – and
people have all agreed to support that standard – it allows
you to choose which platform you want to use for a partic-
ular application. This is important to a multi-cloud or hybrid
cloud strategy. Choice matters when you are dealing with
issues such as data privacy and data residency. Also, if you
have to run an application close to an edge device, you need
to have choice about where you can place it.
Having a container strategy enables you to have ubiquity
around those who support a set of container platform APIs.
Kubernetes appears to be the platform of choice that’s
being adopted across industry; it enables people to run that
set of APIs that gives users a choice now. Three years from
now, you may make a different choice. Because it’s open
source, you can decide which distributions work for you in
the market space.
Optimizing Your Environment
There’s a decent amount of debate about whether to use
containers with VMs or in place ofVMs. In our opinion, run-
ning them separately enables organizations to take advan-
tage of all the lightweight features and optimize their envi-
ronments for success. You can pack more applications on a
host computer using containers in place of VMs. Conversely,
running containers inside a VM is like trying to attach a
horse to the front of a car. Why take what’s speed optimal
and go backward in technology and run it inside a VM?
A container strategy has to bridge both the public and the
private areas. Containers enable you to make a step forward
to collapsing technology stack and elimination unneeded
weight that typically come along with virtual machines.
Conclusion
Without a container strategy you are betting that one of
these vendors will solve all your problems. You’re taking a
risk that the world is going to evolve how you envision it
and you’re limiting your ability to adapt to change.
Containers are here to stay. They offer a host of benefits for
organizations seeking speed, choice and flexibility in the
way they deliver software. As the new decade approaches,
now is the time to start building out what your new ecosys-
tem looks like for data centers and the cloud. That overar-
ching strategy should include containers as a vital piece of
your core infrastructure.
FALL
FALL 2019 | THE DOPPLER | 57