The platform even allows admins to set conditions that ramp applications up or down based on user demand.
“By balancing incoming loads better, organizations can make better use of their physical resources,” Matt Ferrari, CTO for ClearDATA, writes in Forbes. “It also eliminates the need for manual intervention entirely, boosting productivity for health care IT teams.”
While healthcare still must work to gain experience and build expertise in Kubernetes, the platform as a whole is certainly worth IT leaders’ consideration based on its immediate benefits to organizations and relatively manageable implementation.
Overcoming Compliance and Security Concerns of Kubernetes
Despite the array of opportunities that containerized applications offer, health IT leaders still face a slew of regulatory and compliance hurdles in implementing them. This often leaves IT teams having to choose between growth and innovation or security and compliance.
However, with Kubernetes, these goals can now be one and the same.
Container technology can often help healthcare organizations avoid some of the most common security headaches they face, such as malware and operating system patching.
“Each time a new version of an application is deployed, the existing container cluster is destroyed, and new nodes and clusters are redeployed,” a recent white paper from ClearDATA explains.
This, in turn, eliminates the need for systems administrators to constantly make sure security patches are run, operating systems are up to date and long-hidden malware isn’t sitting on the underlying infrastructure.
Despite the hesitation by IT leaders to implement such new technology, Kubernetes itself helps to minimize human error via automation. And because the platform is self-monitoring and self-healing, it also minimizes operational vulnerabilities.
By providing a secure framework for data protection, containerized applications and Kubernetes have the potential to keep healthcare organizations safe and secure while ensuring patients have greater access to their personal health information.