A sturdy business grows from steady foundations, which is why companies must ensure they implement the right infrastructure as early as possible. With start-up owners and entrepreneurs often stretched too thinly to become a master of all trades, they must harness technology to bridge the knowledge gap, safeguard their critical data and optimise business potential.
As cloud-native adoption continues to grow, Kubernetes has become one of the fastest-growing infrastructure platforms and the true benefits for entrepreneurs are only now being recognised. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Kubernetes provides a scalable, cost-effective, and secure system that is agile enough to keep pace with today’s knowledge-rich application developers.
Creating scalable applications using Kubernetes
Most start-ups aspire to grow quickly. Rapid growth requires quick scalability, and to do so, start-ups need technology that will accommodate the input of many users. As SMEs are most susceptible to changes in the economy driven by the global pandemic, businesses must employ a scalable infrastructure that allows them to grow or shrink in alignment with these fluctuations.
Developed by Google engineers, Kubernetes is a scalable platform designed to support large, distributed systems. For start-ups expecting their user base to grow significantly, Kubernetes can handle it. It automatically scales an application to meet business needs, freeing human resources to focus on other productive tasks. For instance, businesses can independently fine-tune the performance of small parts of their system to eliminate bottlenecks and achieve the right mix of performance outcomes.
A prime example of this is Pinterest’s Kubernetes story. With over 250 million monthly active users and serving over 10 billion recommendations every day, the social media network knew these numbers would continue to grow and began to realize the pain of scalability and performance issues. By utilising Kubernetes, it can now take ideas from ideation to production in a matter of minutes, as compared to hours or even days previously.
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Keeping business costs down
Kubernetes software is an affordable solution which creates efficiencies that save time, money and, in turn, boost productivity. As Kubernetes and its ecosystem evolve, automating specific workloads and processes has become critical in cost reduction, particularly securing data and resource utilisation.
Kubernetes offers automated security measures such as end-to-end vulnerability management and implementing security policy by using code. In the former, real-time admission control and real-time scanning mean security teams do not need to manually intervene – freeing them up to manage other areas of cost outflows.
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In the latter, security is automated when building infrastructure, meaning that teams can focus on app development rather than security measures. Leveraging security policies by using code enables teams to define the ‘allowed behaviour’ of their application in production, leading to less security containment costs.
Kubernetes applications automatically allow businesses to see details about individual containers and their resource requests and usage through real-time dashboards like Kasten K10. Businesses can then identify which containers are using the most resources and make adjustments to reduce overall business costs.
Kasten K10 provides enterprise operations teams with an easy-to-use, scalable, and secure system for backup, disaster recovery, and mobility of Kubernetes applications. Essentially, it allows development teams to achieve extraordinary feats of operational strength – while minimising the organization’s financial burden.
Putting transferable skills into play
In recent years, new technologies such as Kubernetes are bursting onto the scene and gaining traction amongst young developers in Singapore. With universities such as the National Technology University (NTU) beginning to introduce Kubernetes into their curriculums, Singapore’s youngest developers are adequately equipped with the skillsets to propel the industry forward. Several educational institutions are also offering Kubernetes courses under SkillsFuture, thereby incentivising the developers in Singapore to hone their skills in this area.
A recent study by The Linux Foundation and Harvard found that it is not money driving programmers to work on open source, but rather their love of problem solving and creativity. Due to its open-source nature, Kubernetes helps to reinforce autonomous and unique ways of thinking.
Kubernetes is the most popular container management platform in the cloud community as it allows a large community of distinctive end-users, contributors, and maintainers. It is also important to note that Kubernetes has support on many cloud computing platforms and cloud providers like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS, making it easier for Gen Z’ers to create global-reaching applications.
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Today, Kubernetes stands apart from the crowd of container management structures such as OpenShift and Nomad, by offering many functionalities that other monolithic tools do not provide.
Compared to its counterparts, Kubernetes brings a wide range of natively supported features and applications. It supports a variety of typical workloads, languages, and frameworks, and allows for flexibility that will suit many usage scenarios – especially those entrepreneurs and start-up businesses born during this time of global digital transformation. It’s the clear choice for managing work streams in an efficient, flexible, and cost-effective way.
Anthony Spiteri is the senior Global Technologist at Veeam Software
Photo: Creative Commons
