Powering cloud portability with containerization: How to bring agility to your tech stack

Containerization helps enterprises become more agile and efficient while paving the path toward multi-cloud portability. To keep pace, you must containerize at speed and scale – and prioritize standardization.

If you're unfamiliar with this packaging technology, let's start with the basics. Containers are packages of software in which applications run in isolated user spaces while using the same shared operating system. With traditional methods, you can expect errors when code moves to different environments. With containers, they're packaged up and designed to run in any environment, bringing speed and agility to application deployment.

Is your application landscape complex, fixed, and increasingly outdated? Are your cloud migration and modernization initiatives not delivering the results you expected? Did you lift and shift or rehost your applications from an on-premises environment to cloud? Perhaps you're uncertain about where you are in the cloud journey – or even where you wish you were. But you do know your current approach to containerization isn't working – and you need some help.

According to Gartner, 70% of global companies say they'll be running more than two containerized applications by 2023. These companies know that containerization can make their applications more portable, efficient, resilient, secure, and manageable.

Genpact can help you scale your containerization efforts, slash infrastructure costs, and reduce switching costs. And we'll do it without accessing your source codes or production environments.

We do this with our unique Containerization@Scale solution powered by Genpact's CloudSmart Packager. We bring together the strategies, blueprints, models, and policies you need to rapidly scale your containerization efforts in the apps delivery and deployment lifecycle.

Our CloudSmart Packager acts as a containerization factory, providing a future-proof hub for all microservices deployments. Here are just some of the reasons our clients choose Genpact:

• Our framework is comprehensive. We assess your applications using our seven-layer framework to recommend a containerization strategy that delivers results, not rising costs. We look at containerization as value creation, not a technology implementation
• Our adoption strategy is practical. Our containerization design principles cover disposability, immutability, and observability. We also recommend the most suitable container ecosystem depending on your business needs
• We will accelerate your modernization journey. If modernization is not going as expected, our adoption strategy will help you select the right container design pattern, such as a sidecar pattern or ambassador pattern, to ensure reliability and application fault tolerance
• We take security seriously. We prioritize security across every aspect of containerization, including our enhanced DevSecOps processes. We keep your containers safe by integrating with your container security tools
• We manage security drifts. When there is a need to re-containerize applications to fix common vulnerabilities and exposures, our solution helps re-containerize applications at the click of a button to manage security drifts
• We automate policy deployment. We embed policy-as-a-code enforcement upfront – not as an afterthought – to provide smarter, more agile, and more secure policy deployment
• We enable portability. Whether you are implementing containers on-premises, on a single cloud, or in a multi-cloud environment, we focus on giving you the flexibility you need while avoiding hyperscaler lock-in complexity
• We move fast. Prebuilt blueprints and templates that are capable of containerizing apps power our unique approach and solutions on a daily basis
• We're non-invasive. Our solution doesn't require access to your source codes or production environments. We don't slow down your current processes or put your work on hold while we deliver our solutions

Our industrialized and secure approach to containerization helps you:

• Deliver business results quickly: Our solution has helped organizations improve their speed to containerization by up to 70%
• Reduce operating costs: Companies that adopt our solution have seen a 40–50% reduction in infrastructure costs
• Be more agile: We've helped companies halve their cloud-switching costs with automated operations

Let's look at some examples of how we've helped enterprises with containerization.

The challenge: Burdened with an overly complex and fractured web of third-party and custom-developed applications, an energy company struggled to collect, integrate, and convert its data into insights.

The solution: Genpact helped the company consolidate its applications into industry-specific microservices. Using our CloudSmart Packager and advanced-level partnership with Amazon Web Services, we helped it rapidly containerize its apps at scale.

The impact: Technical complexity decreased to deliver cost savings of at least 30%, and serverless architecture enhanced overall performance and availability. Plus, operations effort decreased thanks to an auto-scaling and self-healing design.

The challenge: A bank was facing rising costs, increasing downtime, and static IP hardcoding requirements that were impacting its application performance, usability, and scalability.

The solution: We installed and configured a Kubernetes cluster – a set of nodes that run containerized applications – after a thorough assessment of the application environment. We transformed containerized applications without touching the source code and automated the integration process into the existing CI/CD pipeline.

The impact: The bank saw a 60% reduction in operating costs and a nearly 80% reduction in delivery timelines. The organization now experiences zero downtime and is free from the maintenance costs of upgrades and patching.

Visit our cloud solutions webpage to see how else Genpact's cloud expertise can help transform your organization.