During the past few years, virtualization has become an all-consuming priority for nearly every competitive enterprise, but as market fervor for cloud computing is succeeded by the reality of its complexities, companies are shifting to a more strategic balance of cloud and on-premises resources.

In order to maintain cloud benefits of access and agility in hybrid environments at scale, an increasing number of organizations are looking to the comprehensive solutions offered by Kubernetes’ widely supported container technologies.

“We want to make sure the central services that manage apps can grow as automatically and as scalable as we can,” said Dan Drew (pictured), vice president of engineering at Didja Inc. “We can most effectively accomplish that by leveraging cloud technologies.”

Drew spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California.

As goals of hyperscale become status quo for data-powered business, Kubernetes is enabling a new generation of software developers to reimagine modern computing infrastructures — and Didja is leveraging that power within its own expanding ecosystem.

Speed at scale

Flexible access is a prevailing theme in contemporary digital business offerings, and Didja delivers the benefits of convenience and portability in the world of personal entertainment. The company provides local programming through an application that aims to foster a community around live broadcast and enables content owners to nurture a more direct relationship with every level of consumer.

“We allow them to get the over-the-air channels at high quality no matter where they are, without having to worry about the antenna if you’re mobile or get a Roku [smart TV],” Drew said.

With a team of only 10 employees, Didja serves custom needs across multiple geographic markets and is working to expand its reach. “We have the local presence, but at the same time we want to have all of our stuff managed in a much more effective, central way that we can scale as we grow,” Drew stated.

To maintain unified orchestration throughout market sprawl, Didja and many digital companies are re-architecting infrastructures based around a more strategic utilization of hybrid cloud options. Consistency could pose a challenge for a business with custom local processes supported between multiple platforms, but Didja’s commitment to rapid availability informs its strategic decisions around where to employ both internally developed solutions and third-party support.

“A key part of the decision in a hybrid model is what’s in the cloud and what’s not,” he said. “What would it cost to build it ourselves or use Amazon’s solution or some other third-party solution? Is that worth it to build ourselves even though that might be cheaper?”

With speed as the top priority for the delivery of its digital content, Didja requires uninterrupted support in all of its different environments. “We pride ourselves on how quickly we go from over the air to someone’s phone,” he said. “We’re 30 seconds to a minute faster than Hulu as far as our streams going live.”

A new era of digital transformation

Crucial to Didja’s fast-paced, multi-platform strategy are the machine learning processes that enable data center communication and automated reconstructions needed for continuous expansion.

“Your first instinct is just get things up, [but] you realize you have to kind of start again or you’re constantly working around the problem you created,” Drew said. “We’ve invested a lot of time in automation, making sure the system is well-defined, networking set up so data centers can talk to each other.”

With its wide support in a variety of cloud and on-premises environments, Kubernetes container orchestration simplifies Didja’s programmable hybrid networking processes as the company scales. “Kubernetes has won,” he said. “If you go to any cloud provider, they will have Kubernetes support, and there’s a pretty big ecosystem around [it] now.”

In just a few short years since its release, Kubernetes has emerged as a pacesetter not only among container technologies, but within an ever-expanding multicloud ecosystem in desperate need of integration. The orchestration tool boasts a robust ecosystem and expertise that stems from its open-source origins and is seeing increased enterprise adoption as businesses realize a need for its all-inclusive functionality.

“If you’re still micromanaging how many instances you have, you’re not going to scale. Kubernetes handles that,” Drew said.

Kubernetes’ widespread popularity allows software to run in virtually any environment. That network agnosticism paired with comprehensive automated tooling provides a flexible infrastructure that’s been the missing link in enterprise cloud strategy. According to International Data Corp., 93 percent of organizations will use services for multiple cloud providers within the next year.

“Container provides a much smaller footprint where you can run without all the overhead and extra stuff that’s in between a virtual machine and its host,” Drew said.

That agility allows companies like Didja to optimize operations without the painstaking reconfigurations required by manual hybrid integrations. With Kubernetes, the processes that facilitate easy communication between environments are automated, freeing Didja from multicloud minutiae and delivering immediate value.

“We’re basically transcoding incoming signals 24/7,” he explained. “That’s one area where cloud is not the most effective. That’s going to slow down network, ability to deliver streams, [and] cost-effectiveness.”

With its utility proven out over the years since its rise from open-source project to preeminent cloud solution, many are pushing the boundaries of Kubernetes’ capabilities through more spontaneous application. Heptio Inc. co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Beda likened the tool to “jazz improv,” crediting its flair for organic solutions that often exceed preplanned expectation.

Constant updates and development within the Kubernetes ecosystem cultivate a community characterized by innovation and an unprecedented acceleration of the lifecycle from concept to provisioning to cloud. New efficiencies in secure storage and application deployment mean greater reliability and less risk to experimentation, potentially laying the foundation for a new era of digital transformation.

“Containers are the next evolution of the virtual machine,” Drew said.

Orchestrating a cloud-native future

As companies expand, so does their potential to come up against intrusive technology challenges and storage issues. In a market balancing surging data, disparate networks, threats to security, General Data Protection Regulations and more, businesses need constant support to maintain efficacy as they evaluate fresh opportunities for growth.

“The hardest thing in a company, once you get past 30, 50 people, you start to see the technology trip over,” he said. “It’s much easier to access technologies that allow you to scale.”

Outsourcing the challenges of network management with automated containerization enables more streamlined centralized processing, but it also gives businesses the opportunity to realize the benefits of modernization as they continue to transform. The simplification, agility and ecosystem strength provided by Kubernetes’ containerization is key to enterprise expansion and could unlock the potential for future cloud-native innovation.

“The fact that things are available and managed for you, I think will help make a lot of companies successful,” he said. “What we can do with a 10-person team today is massive compared to what we could do five years ago.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE