Maximizing ROI With Enterprise Container Solutions

Digital transformation is no longer about who can innovate the fastest, but which businesses can deliver the most value to their customers while keeping their costs in check. Enterprise container solutions have become essential to this transformation, actively contributing to improved operational efficiency, resource optimization and, ultimately, a higher ROI. In fact, Gartner reports that by 2025, more than 85% of organizations will be running containerized applications. 

As businesses look to maximize ROI through digital transformation, enterprise container solutions will play a key role in achieving this goal. Below, we’ll examine exactly how embracing containerization speeds up application delivery, increases scalability and creates a smoother path toward innovation.

Boosting Application Performance With Enterprise Container Solutions

Application performance plays a pivotal role in revenue generation. Today’s consumers expect fast, seamless interactions on every service they use. Failing to provide this experience directly affects customer satisfaction, leading to potential sales loss and reduced customer loyalty. 

Containers play a key role in providing the expected speed and performance of your enterprise’s applications. Containers package applications and their dependencies into isolated environments, allowing for consistent performance across various infrastructures. This eliminates the delays often caused by different environments, making it easier for developers to deploy new updates or features rapidly. For businesses, this translates into reduced time to market — meaning faster product launches, quicker responses to customer needs and a more satisfied user base.

Scalability is another major advantage of containerization. For instance, as businesses experience fluctuating demands (such as holiday shopping or a sudden increase in user traffic), containers make it easier to scale applications up or down seamlessly. 

For example, Stylez is a Japanese company that provides Java applications and open source solutions to industrial and electronics manufacturers. When the company was approached by a major automotive parts manufacturer for an AI-assisted quality inspection solution, Stylez determined a containerized architecture would be the best option. Using SUSE Rancher Prime, the company was easily able to scale its deployment and support non-stop factory operations through modular self-healing software.

How Enterprise Container Solutions Lower Downtime

Even brief outages can have a significant impact on an organization’s ROI. Enterprise container solutions mitigate this risk by improving high availability and fault tolerance. For instance, these solutions allow applications to be distributed across multiple environments, ensuring redundancy and reducing single points of failure. Should hardware or software fail, container management tools can automatically trigger failover processes, keeping downtime to a minimum and applications running smoothly. For example, Hyundai achieved 99.95% service level agreement for Kubernetes services via SUSE Rancher Prime, impacting revenue, customer satisfaction and overall productivity. 

Additionally, observability solutions allow for an unprecedented amount of visibility for teams, allowing them to identify issues before they escalate, further mitigating the risk of downtime.

Germany’s Federal Employment Agency is another organization that achieved less downtime using SUSE’s Rancher Prime. The agency conducts around 14,000 consultations and makes 55,000 placement proposals every day. Additionally, there are 95,000 customer phone calls with discussions taking place with around 15,000 visitors in career information centers. After the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the agency’s processes, they switched to Rancher Prime, giving them much-needed agility, visibility into all clusters and more access control.

Optimizing Resource Usage with Enterprise Container Solutions

Analyzing how resources are used within an enterprise setting can help organizations identify where resources are being wasted or underutilized. The knowledge enables them to more efficiently use computing, storage and networking resources which directly impacts cost savings and ROI. By isolating applications and their dependencies within containers, organizations can run multiple services on the same hardware or infrastructure with less overhead. This ensures they’re not over-provisioning resources, which leads to more cost-effective operations.

Container management tools, like SUSE Rancher Prime, make it easier for organizations to get better ROI from their Kubernetes containers. For example, Home Depot used SUSE Rancher Prime to better manage its 2,200 stores across the U.S. The integration also allowed the company to increase its flexibility and resiliency in managing their infrastructure and increase their speed to market.

3 Benefits of Using Enterprise Container Solutions for Boosting ROI

The benefits above are just a few ways enterprise container solutions can benefit organizations. Additional advantages include:

1. Enhanced security and compliance. Enterprise container solutions include built-in security features such as isolation, minimizing the risk of security breaches by separating applications and their dependencies. 
2. Simplified maintenance and upgrades. Containerization reduces the complexity of managing and updating applications by enabling seamless deployments and updates without downtime.
3. Long-term ROI from future-proofing IT infrastructure. Investing in containers positions enterprises to adapt to future technologies more easily. Containers are also highly portable across cloud environments and can seamlessly integrate with existing tools.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Business With Container Solutions

From enhanced application performance to reduced downtime and optimized resource usage, enterprise container solutions like SUSE Rancher Prime provide organizations with a powerful way to boost ROI. Investing in container solutions not only benefits businesses today but also future-proofs their IT infrastructure for emerging technologies. 

SUSE was recently named a leader in 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Container Management — learn more about our recognition as a leader in the container management space.

Ready to see how containers can transform your operations? See how SUSE’s enterprise container solutions have helped customers improve their ROI in these case studies.