CaaS or Container as a Service is a cloud-based service enabling developers and IT departments to upload, organize, run, scale and manage containers using containers-based visualizations. These containers refer to a package of software that includes all dependencies essentially required to run any host system. Let’s dive deep into the topic to justify the importance of CaaS in DevOps.
In a conventional IT business set up, developers look for agility while operations require control, availability, and governance. The developers start the journey by developing innovative software to keep their clients and customers engaged, attracted, and loyal. IT operations aid in this journey by ensuring:
- All systems and environments are working correctly, and
- Maintaining compliance with all rules and regulations that are applicable.
The use of an open-source container platform helps to end this conflict between the two verticals of DevOps. It effectively brings them together and enables a successful collaboration wherein:
- Developers get a chance to own everything within the container and are also able to control the behavior of all the containers working together as one single application and
- IT operations get exclusivity in ensuring the running of the application as required and also to ensure its proper security, management, and scalability.
CaaS—the basic concept
Consistency is the key, and to ensure the same for DevOps, the concept of CaaS or Containers as a Service was formulated. It is being touted as the future platform for the working of DevOps.
CaaS is a model platform wherein all verticals of DevOps can collaborate as a team to ensure that the:
- Developers can build and deploy software applications in an almost self-serviced manner and
- IT operations can help secure and manage the application environment, i.e. its content and its infrastructure.
A simple workflow of CaaS includes three main components:
- The developer who is involved in building and developing environments,
- The IT operations which help deploy, manage, and scale the same and
- The collaborating toolset makes use of the secure application lifestyle to enable the separation of concerns while unifying the two verticals.
The successful implementation of this is achieved easily with the help of an extremely flexible general workflow which can be modified to:
- Enable greater centralized control or
- Decentralize the management and registry so that individual application teams can function separately.
Thus, instead of forcing a workflow, CaaS provides users with a better framework that facilitates greater manageability in application delivery.
Enabling DevOps success with CaaS
The adoption of DevOps is now a foregone conclusion. Surveys provide overwhelming statistics. For example, the deployment of DevOps has ensured:
- 46x times more frequency in software deployments,
- 96x increase in faster recovery rates,
- 440x times quicker lead time for implementing changes,
- Much higher operational efficiency and
- A radical increase in overall customer happiness.
But the implementation of DevOps continued to be a struggle. The use of CaaS actually helped ease the process and implement the basic idea of DevOps, i.e. the effective collaboration of the Development and IT operations teams. Thus, CaaS is now considered the future of DevOps because it enables:
- Team unification: The basis of CaaS is a shared platform that supports the critical needs of DevOps by ensuring code portability, quicker development and testing cycles and complete elimination of environment-related production failure. This serves as a unifying foundation for the shared productivity of the two verticals of DevOps:
- Supporting container deployment, essential for developers,
- Enabling container orchestration for the IT operations team and
- Effectively streamlining the collaboration between the two.
Since CaaS offers greater visibility into the workings and needs of the two verticals of DevOps, this shared platform and shared understanding help them to work as a single cohesive unit.
- Conversation elevation: The inability of a developed application to perform in production settings while it was found to work excellently in the development environment has generally been the cause of tensions between the development and the IT operation professionals. The use of CaaS completely erases the occurrence of this situation. This resulted in the consistent performance of the application across both environments. Thus, developers and IT operations professionals were able to spend quality time together so that innovative software applications could be built, deployed, and delivered.With its current capabilities, CaaS has also made it feasible for applications based on micro-services to operate. Consequently, along with promoting better productive relations between the development and IT operation professionals, CaaS’s ability to enable the operation of micro-services-based applications has the potential to drive the promise of DevOps and convert it into reality.
- Application delivery acceleration: The need for the development and delivery of software applications with maximum agility forms the foundation of the development of DevOps. But without CaaS, while the development teams were able to adopt agile practices to reduce their cycle times, the less agile deployment tactics prevalent tended to slow them down, thereby defeating the very purpose of DevOps.The use of the CaaS platform not only cleared this bottleneck but also enabled perfect synchronization between the DevOps teams by making use of:
- Micro-service-based architecture and
- Cloud-native applications to magnify acceleration opportunities.
CaaS also provides for a cleaner code which is easier to maintain and complete automation of its lifecycle, thus speeding up the management process and deployment while also reducing human errors.
The CaaS platform functions as a bridge that helps to narrow the gap between the development and operational teams, thereby successfully enabling a cultural exchange within the organization. Again, the developers and IT operation professionals also need to be guided by shared goals and governed by similar processes so that they can work together closely. It is through this amalgamation of culture and technology facilitated by CaaS, the success of DevOps can ultimately be secured.