Forbes, in one of its articles, noted how innovations in IT have resulted in the growing number of Fortune 500 companies. Corporate behemoths Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber are the quintessence of this newly emerged data-driven business landscape. These giants have one shared characteristic in “being free of legacy IT support.” A majority of enterprises invest a huge chunk of time to support existing systems and infrastructure, as not every enterprise gets the privilege to focus exclusively on innovation. Whenever it is about IT infrastructure, the role of the cloud is imperative. To keep you posted on what these game-changers believe, we have compiled the best practices laid down by the innovators that fast-track business modernization.
Containers and Kubernetes are the first choices of innovators and future-focused enterprises. In the cloud-driven world, cloud-native services have become strategic like never before. To make systems more resilient, Kubernetes helps enterprises to derive maximum possible value from containers. Cloud-native technologies help enterprises to develop apps built with services bundled-up in containers, deployed as microservices and managed on infrastructure with CD workflows and DevOps processes. Innovators boost business agility with database containers as they are efficient in machine utilization and better than virtual machines based strategies. Kubernetes manages and scales microservices to get operational resilience. Derived from a monolithic database, a microservices architecture combined with relational and NoSQL database services provides flexibility and eliminates dependency. Every microservice has the freedom to employ the most suited technology, and it can be updated separately without having an impact on other microservices.
Complete and consistent access to data helps enterprises achieve better data visibility. Besides containers, Kubernetes, and microservices, innovators achieve data agility through data virtualization and database virtualization. Data virtualization incorporates analytics and business intelligence to modernize information infrastructure, protect data, and boost productivity. Innovators leverage data virtualization to make timely decisions and maximize their business performance. Database virtualization incorporates DevOps, disaster recovery, development, and test to add flexibility for computing infrastructure, high database performance, and simplified management. Innovators combine data virtualization and database virtualization for agile and productive IT.
Infrastructure deals with how these cloud-native elements i.e., containers, Kubernetes, and data virtualization will be managed. Cloud infrastructure has to be aligned with the long-term business strategy to minimize operational glitches and drive successful business outcomes. Innovators focus on cloud-native infrastructure as it provides a lightweight, abstracted, low footprint, distributed computing, and networking capability.Netflix capitalized on cloud technologies and pioneered in cloud-native, reinventing, transforming, and disruption to become the largest consumer on-demand content delivery network. Uber used a hybrid cloud approach, chose multiple cloud vendors, and opted for microservices architecture. Airbnb believed in starting with monolith first (then moving to microservices), DevOps culture (with SysOps), configuration as code, continuous delivery (to scale deployment), radical automation, and standardized service creation. To Sum UpDue to outstanding success, companies are curious to know the ideologies of these giants in using cloud-native technology to gain a sharp competitive edge. Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb have brilliantly showcased how agile data-driven services and cloud-native elements can modernize traditional IT. To wrap up, these above mentioned three observations by Forbes can help businesses fast-track architectural planning and implementation i.e., modernization with cloud-native services. Cloud leaders like AWS, Microsoft, and Google are focusing on cloud-native services and are investing heavily in containers and Kubernetes solutions. Most future-gen enterprises have now centered the boardroom discussions solely upon cloud-native technology to derive business strategies!