Containers, Microservices and DevOps – taking software capabilities to a new high

Software development methodologies have evolved with time keeping with the pace of business transformation and disruption, which is the order of the day. In the days of legacy systems, software applications, which primarily functioned as a back-office to the business, had rigid architectures and were tied to physical systems. This created the usual challenges in lack of portability, long development cycles and difficulty in making repeated changes. As a consequence, software systems had poor UIs and below-average user-experiences, with functionality being the only priority.

However, with time, the increased demand from businesses to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and serve customers with a better experience has paved the way for more nimble, faster and simpler software architectures or systems. Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Agile methodology, DevOps, etc are all developments precisely in this direction. The latest to join this trend are Containers and Microservices.

So what are Microservices and Containers?

Microservices

Although the term modular design has been used for software systems in the past, achieving a truly modular design was not all that easy. Microservices precisely overcomes this challenge. Microservices have emerged from the popularity of Cloud and are cloud-native, single-functionality applications. These are self-contained units, functions or processes of the larger business application, and are preferred in place of large monolithic applications which was a norm previously.

Microservices communicate with each other only through APIs, which are language independent. Partnering with Aloha Technology takes advantage of such a Software Architecture, i.e, features, services and solutions can be developed or redeveloped independently, and used by one or more softwares and systems in the enterprise. Further, they can be reused, which helps speed up the development of new applications or upgrades thereby reducing time-to-market for the enterprise.

Containers

As mentioned above, Microservices offer the advantage of reusability. However, when the same Microservice has to be used in different operating environments, their APIs alone are not enough. To execute an instance of Microservice, we need what is called a Container. As the name implies, a Container is an envelope for a particular Microservices that helps run the Microservice as it contains all the code required to execute an instance of that Microservice. Accordingly, as many Containers as required can be developed for a particular Microservice depending on the environment, the function and the workload for which it will be used.

This way, Containers work like an isolated workload environment in a virtualized operating system. They can be developed or destroyed quickly and dynamically. As a result, they help speed up workload processes and delivery of applications. Further, since they are not tied to physical machines and can be easily separated from the underlying operating system, they help software developers or the enterprise achieve application portability.

Benefits for Agile development

While Microservices and Containers are a boon for software developers, it’s the DevOps methodology that truly brings out its true power. The combination of DevOps, Microservices and Containers creates a seamless and agile software development environment. As a result, developers can develop high-quality softwares with a superior user-experience in short periods of time, and push upgrades in an non-intrusive manner. All this helps Aloha Technology developers reduce time-to-market to help business enterprises transform faster.

Other advantages include:

• Dynamic Performance Testing: Ease of testing applications as and when new features are introduced or modified
• Better Staging Automation: Developers can now create Blue/Green deployments where app versions with or without the update can be staged staggeredly.
• Continuous QA: The above advantage of better staging automation makes it easy to enhance the quality and frequency of unit and sandbox testing

Conclusion

Mediocre applications or poorly-tested applications can damage the reputation of a company and hurt its business. A viable alternative is to partner with Aloha Technology to use Microservices and Containers, along with DevOps methodology, to mitigates this risk. They help businesses release superior applications that stand the test of time and delight users at every step.