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A new year with new insights – what CEOs can learn from Kubernetes

CEOs-Learn-Biz-Concept-Kubernetes.pngNew Year’s resolutions get a bad rap, probably because their success rate is abysmal. So instead of resolutions, I like to set goals for the year. These goals typically involve constantly learning new things -- which is easy to achieve if you’ve got a curious mind.

When I came across Why CEOs Should Learn the Kubernetes Way of Thinking, the article seemed perfect to read at the start of 2022. I’m familiar with Kubernetes, but I never thought about the tool helping with my thinking.

Although I’m not a CEO, I was intrigued. Below is a summary of the original article and some thoughts on what I learned from it.

First things first – what exactly is Kubernetes?

For those with only a general knowledge of Kubernetes (also sometimes called K8s), the author of the original CIO.com article, Thomas Phelan, provides a comprehensive description. Kubernetes is “…an orchestration technology that integrates and amplifies the many benefits of cloud-native architecture. Kubernetes is well known for supporting the automation of configuring, deploying, and scaling of microservice-based applications that are implemented using containers.”

He goes on to explain “…microservices-based applications orchestrated by Kubernetes are highly automated in their deployment and management, as well as their maintenance, so that it’s possible to create applications that are highly responsive and adaptive to spikes in network traffic and needs for other resources.”

3 key principals of K8s

Phelan says Kubernetes and cloud-native architecture deliver three key benefits: scalability, flexibility, and differentiation. He makes the case that CEOs should learn from these benefits, applying the same principles to lead or redesign a successful modern business.

  • Scalability

Unlike traditional on-premises IT, cloud-native architecture uses a different design philosophy. That’s because in the cloud, everything is controlled by APIs. Therefore, it’s possible to create and configure highly automated compute platforms and application clusters using APIs and configuration files. And once these are running, they automatically scale bigger or smaller as needed. Need a hundred more? No problem! Merely spin them up on demand and turn them off the same way. 

What can a CEO learn from the scalability capability in Kubernetes? According to Phelan – a lot. A typical CEO would love to be able to deliver products and services to customers in this same manner. Although CEOs can’t magically turn everything into an API, they can identify processes that create scale in a way that won’t hurt their business. For example, a CEO should try to identify any harmful processes and fix them – such as those that create organizational complexity and bottlenecks as they scale.

  • Flexibility

Phelan explains that containers support cloud-native architecture (and the system of multiple small applications called microservices) by enabling an instance of an application to be run anywhere (on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge.) This capability is based on a small human readable text file that describes the application and its minimum software requirements.

In other words, containers are given just enough information to run an application. And with containers, there’s a single shared copy that can be used wherever the container is invoked. Microservices are also less complex, easier to debug, stateless, and independently scalable. These capabilities give enterprises a tremendous amount of flexibility in how they deploy software across their business.

We can apply the same kind of flexibility to how CEOs lead. CEOs can learn to use intelligent business processes and organization designs built to scale up and down simply and quickly. For example, retailers routinely scale up for the Christmas rush during the holidays and then scale down afterwards. All businesses can implement similar flexible processes, able to expand capacity or repurpose staff and resources depending on need.

  • Differentiation

Enterprises create containers that access system resources via APIs, such as the Container Storage Interface (CSI) and Container Network Interface (CNI). Regardless of the hardware, containers ask for a network connection and communicate with the underlying software and hardware to do what is needed. This abstraction of the application from the underlying infrastructure demonstrates the power of Kubernetes – it’s what differentiates this technology from many others.

Enterprises can now deploy the application anywhere, from Amazon to Microsoft Azure to Google to RedHat OpenShift to HPE Ezmeral,” says Phelan “Essentially, Kubernetes allows companies to manage their microservices and cloud-native architectures seamlessly.

This means application developers can focus on what’s important and ignore what’s not. In the same way, the most effective CEOs recognize what differentiates their solution from that of their competitors.

Instead of building and supporting infrastructure that doesn’t differentiate their solution from the competition, CEOs should focus on creating the processes that matter (or in Kubernetes terms – the microservices). CEOs need to learn how to get past common plumbing issues and focus instead on product and service differentiations that customers will pay for and those that lead to higher rates of satisfaction.

Putting it all together

Phelan concludes his article by stating the relationship between software design principles and well-known business success strategies is not a coincidence. “Giants in the industry, who have spent decades engineering their software processes to implement these positive business outcomes, are also the ones behind Kubernetes and container technology.”  Phelan goes on to suggest all businesses take advantage of not just the technologies of Kubernetes and cloud-native architecture, but also the ideas behind them.

Read Tom Phelan’s full article in CIO.com, Why CEOs Should Learn the Kubernetes Way of Thinking. Learn more about HPE Ezmeral Runtime Enterprise, a software platform designed to deploy cloud-native and non-cloud-native applications using 100% open-source Kubernetes—running on bare-metal or virtualized infrastructure, on-premises, on any cloud, and at the edge.

Alison Golan

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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About the Author

AlisonGolan

Alison Golan is a writer/editor for HPE's social marketing team. For 30+ years, she’s been writing about technology – from hardware and software to networking and streaming. She started her tech career as a public relations specialist, arranging media coverage with CBS, CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Fortune. Today, she enjoys transforming technical jargon into compelling stories.