Seva Vayner, director of edge cloud stream at G-Core Labs, on why managed Kubernetes is key for success in the media sector
Kubernetes has become a headline grabber across media realms in recent years, as cloud migrations and the need for containers has become vital to achieving speed, automation and stability. However, when the aim behind the solution is scalability-through-simplicity, the notion of managed Kubernetes represents the next frontier.
There is perhaps no industry that exemplifies consumers' demand for immediacy and variety more than media. Catalysed by the pandemic and people being forever 'logged on', providers in the sector have an obligation to serve up more than just relevant content. That content has to be quick, it has to be undisrupted, it has to be diverse, and it has to be of high quality.
The transition of IT infrastructure to the cloud was an opening gambit to meet these demands for most. Virtual machines intended to help manage new content formats compounded and complemented the shift, scaling production requirements and a broader portfolio of resources for services such as video streaming.
In this vein, it quickly became clear that entertainment now required containerisation. And Kubernetes was the orchestrator to facilitate this.
Global heavyweights including the New York Times, Spotify and Wikimedia have all identified Kubernetes as the vessel to navigate present-day consumption expectations, as part of an 81% IT leader contingent who now rate Kubernetes as an important business solution in general. For this media elite, scalability, relative to broader consumption trends and preferences, is a primary concern. But to update, refine and evolve content delivery, without the fear of downtime, delays and performance drops, is the holy grail.
With Kubernetes, media as an industry has discovered a more manageable way to deliver content to consumer 2.0. Now, as businesses begin to scale more seamlessly, they can't afford to lose that level of control. The breaking news now needs to be managed Kubernetes.
An invaluable solution for a sector in need
For those yet to turn on the Kubernetes channel, it is a solution designed to help manage containers, as part of IT infrastructures in the cloud, in a structured and fully automated way.
The reason why this proposition is so attractive to the media segment is due to those aforementioned concerns around content delivery. Other industries have embarked on digital transformations and cloud transitions too, of course, but few are judged so strictly on their online service delivery. In ecommerce for instance, a delay or disrupted online channel will incur frustration but wouldn't necessarily lose a customer. For media portals, if an application isn't functioning, is of poor quality, or is disrupted, then its whole worth to a consumer is lost.
This is why the notion of containerisation, and Kubernetes as an orchestrator, is so invaluable. The solution ensures that content production is easy to scale in automatic mode, while critically doing so without any downtime during update deployment. The containerisation aspect guarantees that system failures don't lead to performance drops.
Essentially, Kubernetes gives an industry in need of flexibility the agility and scope it requires. It gives a contingent that has been forced to scale a way to do so in an automated and viable way. And it gives service providers seeking help with development management a much-needed hand.
Managed development
So, why the need for managed Kubernetes as an elevated proposition?
Pulling upon that final benefit of development management, media businesses are in a state of perpetual growth. The adoption of containerisation has gone a long way to helping manage an ever-scaling set of resources, content arms, production tools and streaming requirements. However, there is still an initial strain inherent with that first adoption phase: knowing when to strike, how best to do so, and ensuring a bespoke alignment of future IT infrastructure with future growth forecasts.
And, at the other side of a successful adoption, with scaling now made more simple, there is also then the need to manage increasing container complexities.
A managed Kubernetes solution, such as that provided by G-Core Labs, takes care of both sides. As a cloud provider first and foremost, the company helps the initial creation of an IT infrastructure management solution with Kubernetes as the container orchestrator. This is done in situ with the media provider's own decision makers to inform bespoke company strategy, leading to a more customised deployment based around task requirements and suitable tariff plans.
The end result is a partnership and managed service where the customer is able to better manage containers. The use of the latest Intel Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake) Gen 3 processors ensures that all of this innovation is sustainable, despite the size of workloads. This occurs while also receiving 24-seven support at a rate that simply offsets their own resource outlays should they embark on this journey alone.
Managed Kubernetes as an enabler of scalability was never in doubt, and the world's media outlets have quickly tuned in to its potential.
This article was sponsored by G-Core Labs
