What is the common factor between Tinder, Airbnb, Pokemon Go, and Pinterest? Well, they all use the popular container-based system Kubernetes to run the application more efficiently and cost-effectively. With the progression of time, this popular container orchestration platform has gained more impetus and is extensively used to create new and advanced cloud-native applications. At the same time, developers employ Kubernetes for software modernization and enhance legacy workloads. It provides increased scalability and flexibility, besides boosting development speed.
You must note that Kubernetes is a free and open-source platform developed and maintained by Google. According to Statista’s recent report, more than 60% of organizations have adopted Kubernetes to build modern software architecture. Also, the report indicates that the container technology’s market share was about 24.4% in 2023. If we look at the CNCF Annual Survey Report, more than 46% of developers are using it.
Here in this article, we are going to explore the top benefits of choosing Kubernetes for software modernization purposes.
1. Enhanced Scalability
If you ask any developer, they will tell you that one of the biggest reasons why Kubernetes is a preferred choice for modern software development is its inherent scalability. When you modernize legacy systems, the prime focus remains on enhancing their capabilities and performance by efficiently handling large volumes of data and increasing web traffic. You might face several issues like downtime or server errors with traditional infrastructure. However, Kubernetes is an exception that automatically manages containerized applications across the cluster of machines to scale them up or down based on the requirements.
It also offers an auto-scaling feature that helps you dynamically allocate resources without disrupting the services. Hence, Kubernetes is one of the most essential assets for microservices architectures to seamlessly manage different workloads and traffic levels. It allows you to scale each service independently.
2. Accelerated Development and Deployment Cycles
Speed is one of the most important considerations when organizations look to modernize their software solutions. With Kubernetes guaranteeing accelerated development speed and faster deployment cycles, developers are choosing it to enable a DevOps-centric workflow. It provides improved consistency across different environments.
The containerized platform seamlessly integrates with CI/CD pipelines to streamline the deployment process and update application codes. When you automate the deployment, the chances of human error nullify and speed up the release cycle. QA team can fix the bugs more quickly and accurately, leading to achieving faster time-to-market.
3. Attaining Cost-Efficiency Through Resource Optimization
One of the major concerns for startups and small businesses planning to modernize their software systems is regarding higher costs and dealing with the complex cloud subscription models. The good news is that Kubernetes has addressed this problem by optimizing resource utilization and scheduling the workloads efficiently across a cluster of nodes. Optimization of resource usage leads to minimizing the overhead costs as organizations can use existing infrastructure more efficiently.
The built-in resource management feature available in Kubernetes ensures the appropriate allocation of resources to the application’s CPU, memory, and storage. It allows developers to avoid the costly over-provisioning process. Kubernetes also lends its full support to hybrid and multi-cloud development strategies to optimize costs.
4. Resilience and High Availability
Software modernization ensures that new architectures are resilient and have high availability. This is where Kubernetes proves handy by providing robust self-healing capabilities that automatically restart failed containers, replace them, and even reschedule workloads. It increases uptime and maintains high availability, especially helpful for apps that rely on real-time data insights.
The load balancing feature helps to ensure that website traffic is evenly distributed across multiple instances and prevents overloading of a single instance. Also, Kubernetes can automatically roll back changes if something goes wrong and it can add another layer of reliance when modernizing software development.
5. Containerization is a Key Modernization Enabler
Kubernetes is known to provide the best optimal performance when managing containerized applications, which is the foundation of modern software architecture. Developers can easily and quickly run applications across multiple environments using containers to bring more consistency and trigger the development process.
Also, Kubernetes is employed to reduce friction during the deployment and decoupling of application components, ensuring components communicate effectively while remaining isolated. It simplifies the task of developers, making it easier to develop, test, and deploy modern software applications.
6. Microservices Support for Modern Architectures
The phase of software modernization has changed and many applications require migration from monolithic to microservices architectures. There is no doubt that Kubernetes is a go-to choice and the perfect selection for modern software architectures that efficiently manage microservices and allow each service to run in its container, separated from one another. This separation means that if an issue props in one service, it does not impact others and enhances system reliability.
Kubernetes can also be chosen for handling inter-service communication, which is a critical element of microservices applications. With features like load balancing, network policies, and service discovery, developers can simplify and streamline orchestration of multiple microservices. It reduces overall operational costs and manages architectures precisely.
7. Seamless Integration With CI/CD and DevOps
You will be pleased to know that Kubernetes can seamlessly integrate with DevOps practice and frameworks, which combines the development and operations teams and work in tandem. All organizations looking to enhance software capabilities must adopt the DevOps culture and Kubernetes will help them simplify the deployment, scaling, and management of modern applications. Additionally, Kubernetes also smoothly aligns with CI/CD tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab to facilitate continuous integration and delivery practices.
So, once you synchronize this advanced container orchestration platform with with DevOps pipeline, you can automate all your repetitive tasks and minimize errors. It also supports blue-green deployments, and canary releases, and quickly rolls updates to upgrade software hassle-free.
8. Vendor-Neutral Platform Offers Improved Flexibility
Developers often face the challenge of preventing the new system from getting locked into a particular cloud platform or vendor during the software modernization process. However, Kubernetes has resolved this issue by providing a vendor-neutral platform that developers can run using cloud service providers, such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or even on-premise.
This enhanced flexibility lets organizations implement hybrid or multi-cloud strategies and gain more control over their apps during the deployment process. Also, since Kubernetes is an open-source platform, it offers an extensive and active community of continuous support that ensures its ongoing evolution.
9. Continuous and Fortified Security With DevSecOps
If you are modernizing your legacy software how can you ignore security threats, which is the topmost concern with outdated systems? You have to take some extra care with security when you are working with cloud environments. So, Kubernetes can be your reliable and long-term partner to provide unmatched robust security and support the DevSecOps approach. It has advanced functionalities, including sensitive data encryption, role-based access control, and network segmentation.
Apart from that, Kubernetes can help you enforce security policies across all containers to ensure vulnerability in one container does not affect the entire application. It can automate security checks during the deployment process and mitigate human errors.
Conclusion
Besides these top nine reasons to choose Kubernetes for software modernization, the container management tool also provides various other benefits. These include simplifying the process of modernizing legacy systems, allowing organizations to frame cloud-native modernization strategies, providing continuous monitoring and observability, and offering a rich ecosystem of tools and extensions. Its support for microservices, container orchestration, and DevOps practices enables faster development, enhanced scalability, and cost optimization. So, this is the right time to adopt Kubernetes and make your applications future-ready.