September 12, 2022

Although Kubernetes was originally developed as a means of orchestrating containers to support software deployment, scaling, and management, enterprises have increasingly discovered that it can also be a powerful tool for creating business value.

If your organization is contemplating adopting Kubernetes to simplify deployment, improve resilience, and achieve more efficient scaling and storage, here are a few additional added benefits where Kubernetes can also help you grow your business.

1. Enjoy the benefits of AI now.

The conventional wisdom says that AI-powered solutions will be used more and more often to give companies a competitive advantage. So why wait? Whether you’re a pharma looking to develop drugs faster, an eCommerce provider that wants to offer shoppers personalized recommendations, or a company that wants to improve customer service by deploying a chatbot, you could benefit from the capabilities that ML and AI can provide.

However, several factors make AI deployment challenging, including the intense amount of data cleansing and preparation required, workflow handoff difficulties, provisioning inefficiencies, and more. Kubernetes can overcome these challenges by enabling you to quickly deploy and manage the multiple servers and resources you need to implement AI solutions. AI-supporting Kubernetes capabilities include providing self-service access to data management capabilities, breaking down departmental silos, providing visualization and analytics tools, and more efficient hardware provisioning.

2. Ensure high availability.

How much is high availability worth to your business? Even for companies without 24×7 operations, it’s everything. Maintaining high availability has immediate and measurable business value, ensuring everything from uninterrupted revenue streams to higher customer satisfaction.

Kubernetes ensures high availability by continuously checking the health of nodes and containers, then offering self-healing or auto-replacement in the event of a container or pod crash. Kubernetes also provides built-in load balancers to automatically reroute traffic during outages or peaks. Your business stays up and the revenue streams keep flowing.

3. Get the agility you need to make business moves.

Traditional architectures are not conducive to quick action. Application development – or changes to existing applications – can take months. The time lag between identifying an opportunity and seizing it is much longer than you’d like.

That’s why you should consider adopting a microservices architecture. With microservices and Kubernetes, you can break a single monolithic application into an organized collection of modular components that you can more easily swap out, reassemble, scale up, and reuse. Deploying Kubernetes enables you to implement – and better manage – a microservices architecture. This greatly reduces the time required to develop new solutions, giving you the ability to take advantage of opportunities and respond to new customer demands or marketplace changes. A first-mover advantage can give you the brand recognition, customer loyalty, and incremental revenue you need to outrace your competitors.

4. Focus more energy on business-building activities.

Every organization has to weigh operational costs against investments in growth. The more you spend on maintenance, the less is available for new development. Adopting Kubernetes is one of the most effective ways to tip the scales in favor of innovation and new business opportunities – especially if you adopt a cloud-native managed Kubernetes service.

For example, a recent analysis by Forrester Research showed that, by adopting a Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift environment, developers were able to recoup 20% of their time from infrastructure maintenance and put it toward application development. One organization in the study was able to reassign 25% of its staff from operations to development. That is a significant increase in business value.

How to ensure you reap maximum business value from Kubernetes

Kubernetes can deliver all the value described above – and more – but only if it’s expertly configured and deployed. Unless you have in-house Kubernetes expertise, you’re probably better off opting for a managed Kubernetes service than going it alone.

A managed Kubernetes service enables your team to totally offload the infrastructure maintenance and operation of Kubernetes clusters with total confidence.

Microsoft Azure offers two managed Kubernetes services: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Red Hat OpenShift. At Neudesic, we support them both – and we can help you figure out which service is best for your organization.

What’s your next step to maximizing business value with Kubernetes? We’d recommend our Container Modernization Accelerator, a four-week jumpstart engagement that enables you to accelerate your adoption of Kubernetes with a proof-of-value implementation to deliver higher-quality applications with reduced development cycles and optimized IT costs. An initial discovery helps you choose the orchestrator that best fits your unique needs, followed by a proof-of-value implementation and a customized roadmap for final implementation and best practices.

Our Container Modernization Accelerator is one more way to reap business value, enabling a 70% reduction in development time, a 50% increase in operational efficiency, and a 20% reduction in infrastructure maintenance.

You can learn more about the features and capabilities of AKS and ARO by downloading our eBook, Creating Business Value with Managed Kubernetes Services.