Application delivery infrastructure

Digital transformation is changing the way that application  delivery is managed

To meet the growing challenges of a competitive world economy, a digital transformation is taking place in the enterprise using application delivery. Organizations realize that to be competitive they need to be more agile. They need to reach their customers wherever they are, and they need to be able to scale their applications to meet customer demands.

To meet these challenges, organizations are deploying new microservice applications that are changing the application delivery environment. These applications are agile, configured to enable new features to be added without disrupting applications in production, and designed to automatically instantiate instances in response to increasing user demand.

In short, microservices are drastically changing the way that applications are deployed and managed. This introduces a high level of complexity to network infrastructures because traditional applications are not going away.

Applications will continue to be designed for both microservices and traditional 3-tier implementations, and organizations will need to maintain traditional IT practices while developing agile practices for newer DevOps microservice applications.

These factors create unique challenges for your applications delivery solution and make selecting an ADC platform that can support both traditional and microservice architectures with a hybrid application delivery model, the key to bridging the gap between these different modes of app delivery.

Primary drivers for a hybrid application delivery infrastructure

To embrace the impact of digital transformation on application delivery, and position IT to manage and deploy newer DevOps applications in parallel with legacy 3-tier applications, businesses are adopting hybrid application delivery infrastructures that can bridge the gap between these two applications environments and open up opportunities for innovation.

Some of the key drivers for hybrid application delivery infrastructures include:

• The adoption of container technology for microservices applications, and management systems for rapid iterative application development and deployment.
• The deployment of new microservices applications, which require information or functions that reside in legacy client/server or 3-tier web applications.
• The development of dynamic applications that enable digital interaction and engagement with their stakeholders and customers.

Implications for a hybrid application delivery infrastructure

Supporting a hybrid application delivery infrastructure for traditional and microservices application delivery management places unique demands on your ADC due to the diverse qualities of both models.

With microservices application delivery, ADCs are placed in a container and are deployed per microservice, versus in front of the application servers in the case of legacy applications.

Additionally, with microservice applications, up to thousands of ADC’s might be deployed to support east-west traffic within the application, versus just a few in front of the application servers for traditional 3-tier applications.

These differing structural characteristics create a large management challenge that must be overcome to support both traditional and microservices applications in parallel. As a product, your ADC must have certain capabilities to help overcome these challenges and bridge the gap.

Three things to look for in an ADC to bridge the gap between traditional and microservice app delivery with a hybrid infrastructure

Support for multi-form factors

You need an ADC with form factors for each position in the application environment, including physical, virtual, and containerized—with consistent features across all platforms. This ensures that no matter where you deploy your ADC, you can depend on the same code base and characteristics being available.

A centralized management system

Your ADC should have a management system that can support ADCs in all environments, from a single console, to help troubleshoot and tune performance.

This Management System should give you the ability to configure, monitor, and perform analytical analysis of your application delivery infrastructure across your environment — from the
local data center to the cloud.

A centralized management system

Your ADC should have a management system that can support ADCs in all environments, from a single console, to help troubleshoot and tune performance.

This Management System should give you the ability to configure, monitor, and perform analytical analysis of your application delivery infrastructure across your environment — from the local data center to the cloud.

At Musato Technologies, we are very passionate about assisting organizations with their digital transformation by building innovative applications that automate business processes and operations. Contact us today to get a quote.

Author: Gideon E. M

Gideon Ebonde M. is the CEO and Chief Software Architect at Musato Technologies. He is experienced Software developer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. He has a strong engineering professional skilled in Mobile Application Development, Enterprise Software, AI, Robotics, IoT, Servers, Cloud and business application. He is an accomplished DevOps software engineer and a visionary computer scientist and engineer.