Most social media applications are releasing updates in production hundreds of times a day, whether we realize it or not. This new development-to-operation standard for consumer-based services is mandatory to constantly meet customer needs and show innovation, which ensures their users keep engaging with the application. Still, this release pace may be out of reach for most legacy enterprise applications. So how can you seamlessly support your business in a more agile and dynamic way?
It is certainly easier to start from a blank page and build your solution based on the latest standards and technologies available on the market. Anyone working closely with new technologies has already heard how Kubernetes or Swarm can orchestrate Docker containers to scale on demand. Or, how Chef or Puppet can be used in combination with Jenkins to streamline the CI/CD chain.
Those technologies are easy to adopt and highly beneficial for newcomers. However, most established companies can’t always afford this “wipe-and-rebuild” approach. That is when your IT department plays a key role in bringing solutions that support flexible and evolutive integration with your improving development practice and processes.
What are some key features for infrastructure automation you should look for?
- Container-based software delivery. This allows your software products to install and run independently of your technical infrastructure requirements. This facilitates large-scale deployments while keeping a low footprint that offers more flexibility in terms of release and capacity management.
- Infrastructure-as-a-Code (IaaC) script templates. Software vendors are all building Reference Architecture documents to help design the right solution for most customers use cases. This type of base architecture design can be converted into IaaC scripts, to accelerate the implementation phase while ensuring the adoption of best practices.
- Integration with DevOps-oriented tools for configuration management and test automation. This is essential for the developer community that is embracing DevOps best practices and can’t afford to have manual tasks as part of their Continuous Delivery/Continuous Integration process.
- Administration API to automate any operations on the solutions. Your Production Operations team will be thankful that they don’t have to connect to each server to run a set of scripts to resolve incidents and maintain the overall solution.
Where does a digitalized Managed File Transfer come into play?
A large amount of data is transferred via files every day, which makes the Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution a mandatory partner for business applications. To support the transformation of development cycles in a more agile and integrated process, it is therefore critical that this MFT solution evolve to align with the latest trends in terms of infrastructure automation. Next generations of MFT, that enable self-service capabilities for administration and runtime use, and infrastructure automation for faster deployment and management, will make sure that transferring your business-critical files remains top of the line for your application and corporation as a whole.
Watch this video to learn more about how the AMPLIFY Managed File Transfer solution is helping our customers support their infrastructure automation.