So, what is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes (or sometimes referred to as K8s) derives from the word ‘helmsman,’ which is the Greek translation for “captain” to symbolize its significance in steering businesses through the sometimes turbulent and choppy waters of technology. Initially developed by Google, Kubernetes has become an open-source system for automating the deployment, management, and operations of containerized applications. Since its debut in 2014, it has become the go-to solution for building cloud-native applications, offering a reliable and flexible framework for deploying and managing apps. In fact, according to the Cloud Native Foundation Survey 2023, a whopping 84% of organizations are already adopting Kubernetes or actively evaluating the solution [1].
Why does it matter?
The term Kubernetes may sound technical and rather tedious, but its impact is more significant than one may realise. Kubernetes marks a global transformation from traditional IT infrastructure management to a more automated approach with higher security, flexibility, and stability.
Immutability Magic: Once Kubernetes establishes an object, like a pod or a deployment, it maintains that state and cannot be modified. This helps prevent unauthorized access and ensure consistent configuration across the pods and deployments, allowing the system to operate stably. This stability is a game-changer for reliability.
Declarative Configuration: This feature allows developers to simply tell Kubernetes what they need by describing the desired state of the applications and their resources and let Kubernetes make it happen. This helps simplify the operations of applications, allowing developers to focus on the end goals and setting out application requirements (the what) instead of figuring out the underlying processes (the how).
Built-in Self-Healing: Kubernetes autonomously detects issues and recovers, ensuring services remain uninterrupted. This feature can perform application health checks and deploy healing actions depending on organizations’ pre-defined requirements, ranging from restarting failed containers to replacing retainers with updated versions.
Treasure Trove of Tools: Kubernetes provides developers with a rich toolbox filled with shared resources to streamline development, allowing organizations to leverage existing tools for cost and effort optimization.
Speed and Reliability in Banking
In today’s banking sector, speed and reliability are non-negotiable, given the increasing demand for digital services. Indeed, eight in ten surveyed customers reported using mobile devices for managing bank accounts at least once a month, while more than half did so more than 3 times [2]. Undoubtedly, customers expect a seamless, secure, and undisrupted online banking experience, and banks are racing to deliver. Here’s how Kubernetes supports this effort:
- Agility on Steroids: Banks often navigate spikes in demand, like during tax season, month end or major market events. Failing to accommodate such a sudden rise in demand can lead to system outage, which can cost high-risk enterprises such as financial institutions as much as $5 million an hour in certain scenarios [3]. And this figure has yet to account for uncountable damages such as reputation loss or customer dissatisfaction. Kubernetes helps mitigate these situations by scaling resources automatically to ensure operations run efficiently.
- Empowering Developers: By promoting microservice architecture, Kubernetes allows development teams to break down large applications into manageable components. With this approach, Kubernetes helps speed up the workflow by allowing developers to focus on specific services without worrying about the entire application, thus simplifying the processes of development, deployment, and maintenance.
- Cost Efficiency: Unused server capacity is a financial drain. To avoid these cases, Kubernetes optimises resource usage with efficient workload scaling, thus enabling banks to save money while enhancing flexibility.
- Fortified Security: With financial institutions under constant scrutiny, security is paramount. Kubernetes equips banks with powerful features to protect sensitive data and ensure regulatory compliance.
By employing Kubernetes to manage customer-facing applications, several banking and financial institutes have significantly boosted developer productivity and reduced time-to-market for new features while ensuring system stability. For example, a leading international bank has partnered with FPT to develop a comprehensive set of digital solutions, ranging from a digital lending platform to a payroll solution for blue-collar migrant workers. Integrating Kubernetes into their infrastructure, the bank successfully rolled out these solutions for a large consumer base, having the payroll solution serve as many as 54,000 users without disruptions.
Non-negotiable in today’s tech landscape
Kubernetes has proven that it’s clearly not a passing trend but an essential tool that banks must embrace. With financial businesses facing mounting challenges, including the rising demand for more integrated digital experiences powered by AI and increasing complexities surrounding the use of sensitive data, the need for a powerful, stable, yet highly flexible infrastructure is indeed non-negotiable. As financial services evolve, Kubernetes stands ready as a driving force, enabling banks to meet customer expectations and navigate the regulatory landscape with confidence.
