{"id":1282,"date":"2016-08-29T09:43:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T13:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/cloud-platforms\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2018-07-05T17:05:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T21:05:05","slug":"container-confusion-answering-the-whats-whens-and-when-nots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/solutionsreview.com\/cloud-platforms\/container-confusion-answering-the-whats-whens-and-when-nots\/","title":{"rendered":"Container Confusion: Answering the What’s, Whens, and When NOTS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Container<\/h4>\n

Docker and Containers<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n

In the past, enterprise cloud adoption was primarily focused on software as a service (SaaS<\/a>) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS<\/a>) offerings, but lately there\u2019s been an increasing call for enterprise adoption of Container Services, a technology that allows IT to package computing workloads onto a single server, increasing speed, scalability and the potential for competitive edge. Containers give businesses the ability to innovate and enhance services on the fly. With agile development capabilities, container technology is the perfect tool to support a DevOps approach. Vendors are now looking at ways that deliver the technology more efficiently:\u00a0building on open container technologies in an effort to\u00a0help enterprises IT teams deliver Container Services to their development teams.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0IT research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.<\/a> defines PaaS in their IT glossary:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA [PaaS] offering, usually depicted in all cloud diagrams between the SaaS layer above it and the IaaS layer below, is a broad collection of application infrastructure<\/a> (middleware<\/a>) services (including application platform, integration, business process management, and database<\/a> services). However, the hype surrounding the PaaS concept is focused mainly on application PaaS as the representative of the whole category.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter Container Technology, where the tides begin to turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Gartner reports<\/a>\u00a0that through 2018, more than 70 percent of IT organizations planning a private PaaS will deploy a container service\u00a0(rather than PaaS framework software).\u00a0Over the last couple years the PaaS landscape has changed significantly with the advent of containers.\u00a0Container Services are gaining popularity driven by the widespread adoption of container technologies such as Docker. In fact, this adoption in container technology is also disrupting Cloud Management Platforms,\u00a0accelerating consolidation\u00a0in that space.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Containers and Software Delivery<\/span><\/h4>\n

Lucero del Alba<\/a>, author of the article, \u201cUnderstanding Docker, Containers and Safer Software Delivery\u201d explains<\/span> how delivering software used to be easy:<\/span><\/p>\n

“The hard part was programming, but once you finished you would just handle the product, maybe fix some bugs, and that\u2019d be all.\u00a0Later, with the \u201cLAMP stack\u201d (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) \u2014 which was widely supported by hosting companies \u2014 things got slightly more complicated, but were still manageable. You could deliver dynamic sites linked to databases and set everything up via control panels.”<\/span><\/p>\n

As times change, new technologies like NoSQL databases, and programming languages like Ruby and Python have gained popularity creating more possibilities, but making software delivery more difficult.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucero del Alba<\/a>\u00a0explains the magic of containers: a solution that seemed obvious, and was utilized to tackle some major technical issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“In software development, we may spend days trying to get things working on a different environment \u2014 only for them to fail a couple of days later. It\u2019s easier and faster to ship a working car to a different continent<\/em> than to deliver software that works reliably. Isn\u2019t that kind of embarrassing?\u00a0So people started thinking of something similar to shipping containers for delivering software \u2014 something you could use to ship software in a reliable way, that would actually work as expected: software containers<\/strong>.”<\/span><\/p>\n

When, and When NOT to Use Software Containers<\/span><\/h4>\n

If you are exploring the idea of utilizing software containers for your organization, Del Alba, \u00a0programmer, entrepreneur and container aficionado, gives interested parties some pointers about when, and when containers would not be beneficial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beneficial\u00a0scenarios for using software containers:<\/span><\/p>\n