“Agencies making the transition to a cloud environment are using enterprise container platforms to help bolster their legacy platforms, increase security and make their work more efficient.”
“One of the leading players in the space, Docker, defines a container as ‘a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies, so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another.'”
“End users can access this neutral compute space to conduct research, develop software, and generally make more effective use of their legacy technologies within a modern framework.”
“At the National Institutes of Health, for example, containers are helping to support high-level scientific research. In a heterogenous IT environment, containers help researchers to bypass legacy hurdles that might have stymied their work…”
Containers Help Agencies Upgrade Technology
“Some agency IT shops go a step further, offering Containers as a Service, which includes security and governance tools…”
“Federal agencies can leverage the technology in cases where legacy systems won’t interoperate, yet cannot readily be replaced, he adds.”
“’The cumbersome budget and funding process necessitates these considerations, as wholesale replacement and upgrades across enterprises are rarely an option in federal acquisitions,’ Moran says. ‘In this light, container technology is a proven method to help overcome the challenges of government systems that have been largely cobbled together over time…'”Containers Help with DevSecOps
“The Department of Defense is looking to containers to drive DevSecOps, an organizational software engineering culture that aims to unify software development, security and operations.”
“The DOD is migrating 37 programs to DevSecOps, which mandates container use, says Nicolas Chaillan, chief software officer for the Air Force and DOD enterprise DevSecOps co-lead. A typical DOD DevSecOps stack has dozens of products that include Docker container management; Splunk for monitoring; and cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud…” Read the full article here.
Source: NIH, DOD Use Containers to Support App Development – By Adam Stone, March 3, 2020. FedTech Magazine.