As the need to respond to and stay agile in uncertain and dynamic times intensifies, organizations need to move away from traditional approaches to software development and management. They need to embrace tools and technologies that allow them to improve keep pace with the evolving business landscape. At the same time, they need to deliver a seamless and consistent user experience across devices, locations, and operating systems and ensure user expectations are always met.
One of the best ways organizations can meet these requirements is by embracing the world of containerization. Containers offer a sure-shot way of isolating and packaging an application’s code, along with its dependencies, libraries, configuration files, and other components. Such packaging helps in more efficient usage of resources while also delivering enhanced application portability, so products can seamlessly function across different scenarios.
It is due to these advantages that the global container market size is anticipated to reach $8.2 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 26.5%.
But successful adoption of containers requires careful precision and planning. Organizations need to build a robust, enterprise-ready IT ecosystem that overcomes the challenges of traditional infrastructure and paves the way for modern and mature processes that allow applications to be deployed at speed and scale.
Here are 5 container management challenges every organization should be aware of while planning to embrace the technology:
- Finding the right container skills: One of the biggest challenges of successful container management is finding people with the right skills. Given how complex container technology is, without the right skills, it gets extremely tough to understand how containers work, the relationships between clusters as well as how they respond to applications and dependencies. Training resources on the latest container technologies is a great way to deepen skills and simplify the management and monitoring of a technology that is gradually sweeping the IT world.
- Optimizing the underlying infrastructure for containers: Despite the benefits that containers offer, optimizing the underlying IT infrastructure for containers is a Herculean task. Since containers require modern and scalable infrastructure to work like a charm, there is a lot of effort IT managers need to put to ensure the technology and systems which need to be containerized are elastic and efficient. Configuring the infrastructure and using well-known and documented APIs that can provide scalable compute, storage, and networking capabilities is critical to achieving the intended benefits from containers.
- Dealing with security vulnerabilities: When it comes to containers, security is another big hurdle that needs to be crossed. Since containers deal with several different components, they tend to expand the attack surface for hackers. Dealing with different vulnerabilities related to access, authorization, and integration requires organizations to implement security best practices and pave the way for better risk management. Teams also need to fully understand potential vulnerabilities to enable encryption, restrict access, and apply appropriate controls to thwart attacks.
- Choosing the right container management tools: Successful management of container technology requires managers to choose the right container management tools for orchestration, storage, integration, and networking. However, given the plethora of tools available in the market today, selecting the best ones can be extremely difficult. The right tools can not only help organizations successfully run a hybrid mix of applications; they can also simplify, standardize, and consolidate containers for improved compatibility and smoother integration.
- Enabling and ensuring integration: Although containers are expected to function on their own, as independent, isolated identities, they also have to be integrated with other containers and APIs in the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the procedures, tricks, and tools that are considered best practices for normal systems cannot be applied to container systems. Managers need to educate themselves (and their teams) on how they can seamlessly integrate containers across the different layers. They also need to make the architectural move from monolithic applications to more granular microservices for improved functionality and performance.
Container Management a notoriously complex
Container management is known to be notoriously complex. With the right approach, skills, or tools, it can get excruciatingly difficult to overcome challenges relating to orchestration and integration. Although embracing container management best practices can help in dealing with these challenges, partnering with a qualified and experienced partner can provide you with the knowledge and skillsets needed to adapt to the evolving landscape while ensuring your containerized applications are flexible, secure, and scalable.
