What are cloud containers? Understanding containerized architectures

Containers have proven to be a core piece of the puzzle in delivering cloud-native solutions. In a Cloud Native Computing Foundation report, more than 90% of organizations said they rely on containers and related technologies for a significant portion, or nearly all, of their cloud-native application development and deployment.

With containers becoming more mainstream, it’s becoming more critical for enterprises to notice. That starts with answering a simple question: what are cloud containers?

An introduction to cloud containers

Building and maintaining cloud-native solutions requires a new approach for deploying applications in the cloud – one that is more efficient and lightweight.

Containers are a means of doing just that.

Take the analogy of an actual shipping container, which the name of the technology implies.

Isolation: Just like physical shipping containers keep items separated and protected from the outside environment, cloud containers isolate applications from each other and from the underlying infrastructure. This ensures that each application has its own space, preventing conflicts and enhancing security.

Standardization: Shipping containers have standard sizes and structures, so they can be used globally on any transport system. Similarly, cloud containers are standardized units (like Docker containers – more on this later) that can run on any platform supporting containerization, ensuring consistency and compatibility.

Portability: You can move a shipping container from a ship to a truck to a train without unpacking it. In the same way, containers enable applications to be used across different environments (hardware and operating systems) or between different cloud providers while maintaining its original purpose.

How cloud containers work

Containers are the latest virtualization technology where you can package up an application’s code and all its dependencies so it can run reliably in any environment.

They are more lightweight than virtual machines because they don’t require their own OS and have a smaller resource footprint.  This makes containers more agile and efficient than virtual machines when deploying applications in a cloud environment.

Containers function through technologies like Docker and Kubernetes. While Docker allows developers to package applications and dependencies into container images, the containers themselves are deployed and managed by orchestration services like Kubernetes, an open-sourced orchestration platform.

Kubernetes automates critical container management tasks to deliver rapid deployments, improved scaling, and dynamic resource allocation.

Together, these technologies make containers a highly efficient, consistent, and resilient way of managing cloud-native applications.

Why enterprises are turning to containers

The market for container-related services was valued at $3.77 billion in 2023. By 2030, its value is projected to reach $29.7 billion.

One of the biggest drivers for this market growth is agility. As companies look for ways to be more efficient with their resources and availability, containers enable enterprises to make better use of their resources while also providing a means of avoiding downtime for things like system maintenance and upgrades.

Another driver is scalability. With container technology, organizations can rapidly respond to fluctuating business needs – in other words, as demand for an application increases, additional containers can be dynamically deployed to meet that demand.

This dynamic autoscaling can prevent bottlenecks with critical business operations and flows.

The fusion of internal and external benefits can lead to a quicker time to value as enterprises build modern DevOps practices that strengthen the collaboration between those teams responsible for delivering and managing both the company’s platform and its portfolio.

In this way, containers are part of a larger cloud (or hybrid!) strategy and provide a solid foundation on which to evolve a company’s business.

Leveraging the value of containers

B2B integration and EDI

Since EDI is the lifeblood of many businesses, high availability of the B2B integration applications that process EDI data is critical.

Customers who have trusted Axway technology (some of them for decades) are planning today for a container-based architecture in which Axway software will be deployed as a containerized application.

With the agility and scalability provided by container-based technology, customers can accommodate unexpected volumes in EDI traffic, or install patches and upgrades with minimal or no downtime. In short, you can avoid scenarios that might negatively impact your SLAs.

MFT

Similar benefits play out in the context of managed file transfer (MFT). Cloud containers enable deployment based on your load and allow you to adjust to support spikes on demand quickly.

In addition, as stronger security of B2B infrastructures becomes paramount in ensuring better resilience, container-based architectures facilitate mandatory security upgrades and patches.

For both solutions, tools and capabilities within a cloud-native deployment model ensure you can run at minimum or maximum capacity with peace of mind.

The power of container technology

Containers offer a consistent and efficient way to develop, deploy, and manage applications across your B2B ecosystem.

It’s important to mention that adopting containers comes with its own set of challenges, such as new skills and resources to support and manage them (unless you opt for a fully managed solution, of course), but the overall benefits of increased availability and business agility are too compelling to ignore.

Containers may be a relatively new technology, but the value they enable for enterprises will one day be as ubiquitous as cloud computing itself.

They provide businesses with a means of achieving NZDM (near zero downtime maintenance) more easily than ever before so that activities like software upgrades and fixes don’t interrupt critical business operations.

Axway is embracing containers.

With the rollout of native cloud capabilities and support for container deployments for B2B Integration and MFT, we’re taking just one more step forward in modernizing our platforms to meet the needs of customers.