You’ve weighed up the benefits of putting apps in a container and moving them to the cloud, and you’ve identified how you can use it to kickstart your cloud journey. But what comes after that? What is life after containers going to look like? And most importantly, what’s really going to change for your IT team and your business at large?

The rest of your cloud transformation gets easier
Containerizing apps isn’t just a simple first step in your digital or cloud transformation – it’s going to make a lot of your next steps easier, too.

Quite simply, containers exist to make moving applications and services easier. If your cloud transformation plans involve moving off of old, unsupported operating systems, moving away from aging legacy hardware, or shifting away from traditional data centers entirely, containers are going to be one of the most valuable tools you’ve got.

If the move you’re planning is to your own private cloud or a modern cloud hosting platform, then even better. Container tools such as Docker are cloud-ready, and built to make your journey into the cloud as simple and seamless as possible.

DevOps gets a lot more efficient
For development teams, containerizing apps makes them easier to move around during testing, easier to iterate, and easier to shift between development and production environments when it’s time to go live. 

Containers themselves make great development and testing environments that can be spun up in minutes – instead of the days and weeks that many DevOps teams are used to dealing with.

By building applications collaboratively in cloud-ready containers, you can start building truly cloud-native applications that can readily evolve alongside your business as it transforms.

Plus, when your apps are in containers, you can automate many of the routine, time-consuming app lifecycle management tasks that eat into valuable DevOps time. Automated builds and automated deployment, for example, take a lot of the lengthy, manual jobs out of the software supply chain, so engineers are free to focus on the things that bring higher business value.

That all adds up to faster and leaner DevOps that enables truly agile development, where deployed applications can be changed and improved almost minute by minute – in line with shifting end-user demands.

Adopting a microservices approach gets a lot easier
Sometimes the thing you want to containerize isn’t a complete application. Often it might be an innovative new service that extends an existing application.

Containers help you free specific functionality or operations from larger, monolithic legacy applications and turn them into nimble microservices – and weave those microservices into future applications. 

With containerized microservices, you can start to build a more integrated application infrastructure, using great capabilities you’ve already developed, instead of building everything from the ground up and having all of your applications work in isolation.

Your business gets a lot faster (and more responsive to change)
Faster transformation and faster development ultimately lead to one big bottom-line result: a more responsive business.

With containers, you can move apps through the software supply chain faster. So, when inspiration strikes and your product development team has an idea for your next big app – or when your customers start getting even more vocal with their demands – you can act fast to deliver the best results for everyone.

It starts with the development experience. From the time it takes to spin up a test environment, to how quickly you can go live with a production-ready application, everything gets much faster, and a lot easier.

Being responsive to change is everything for today’s businesses – and containers play a much more significant role in it than many people realize.

Whatever tomorrow looks like, you’ll be ready
Nobody can say for sure what tomorrow holds for your business. But there is one thing we can say for sure: containers can help ensure you’re ready for it.

By enabling agile DevOps and helping you adapt to shifts in requirements and demands at speed, containers help you prepare for the only constant in modern business – change.

As I mentioned at the beginning, containers exist to enable easier and more efficient movement of applications and services. And when it comes down to it, the ability to move really is one of the most fundamental capabilities that a modern business needs to survive.

Whether it’s acting on new ideas and moving into a new market, moving forward with a major digital transformation plan, or simply cutting operating costs by moving into the cloud, freedom to move is freedom to succeed – whatever tomorrow holds.

Kick-off the small change that’s going to drive hundreds more
If you’re planning to try containerizing your apps for the first time, there are plenty of good reasons to be excited. It’s an easy step to take that’s going to lead to big positive changes for your business. 

There are 99 reasons to move apps to the cloud - find out how containers can be part of your cloud transformation journey.