8 benefits of Google Anthos for business, development and security

UPC Poland: Transforming services and app development through hybrid IT

We had the opportunity to support UPC Polska, both in digital transformation and in implementation of the completely new selfcare application running on Anthos Google Cloud platform. In a result, together with UPC we have designed and built a highly scalable application that is using Anthos as a crucial component to provide a multi-cluster containerization solution able to run in a hybrid cloud environment, allowing better customer service experience.

We are glad that we could support UPC Polska in such an important process of digital transformation. Anthos deployment allowed to ensure, that Cloud services are the right direction for solution development. This hybrid cloud solution provides you with best in the class software-defined platform and managed Kubernetes by Google Cloud, helping simplify hybrid cloud workload management while enabling organizations to respond to changing business needs rapidly. The platform is an extensive solution enabling the implementation of a hybrid cloud in the organization, being an efficient alternative to OpenShift. Also, Kubernetes noticeably simplifies the process of service implementation, management, and orchestration. These advantages cannot be ignored, so Cloud Solutions will continue to be one of the main trends at enterprises which want to build scalable continuous delivery environment.

Multi and Hybrid Cloud is the future

Today, most companies recognize and use the advantages offered by the cloud. In terms of scalability, flexibility, costs, as well as a foundation for innovation and growth, the cloud’s advantages are now self-evident.

However, many business-critical applications should reside in an on-premises data center for a variety of reasons: security, regulatory, latency minimization, and more.
The question then arises - how to make use of the advantages and technologies of cloud solutions in a local data center?

The solution can be a private cloud equipped with virtualization technologies, mechanisms to automate typical processes, self-service functions, and other functions normally available in public clouds. But implementing a private cloud on your own is not an easy task.

Businesses also recognize that cloud data management isn’t about having one specific platform or infrastructure,
it’s about choosing the solution that’s right for the job at hand. They not only operate with multiple cloud providers but also maintain the local legacy infrastructure that is critical to their day-to-day operations.

To meet business expectations, Google introduced the Anthos - integrated ecosystem for on-premise workloads, multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

Proper usage of the Anthos platform can bring many benefits to your business.

Use Anthos platform for faster adaptation to changes

The lack of a full CI / CD process can result in a longer delivery process and more manual work, which increases costs and the risk of errors. It is important to take the time to design and implement the automatic deployment of changes to all environments.
In the long term, a shorter deployment process and fewer developers' work is not the only profit. Automated processes are less prone to errors, and the ability to make quick and trouble-free changes will allow the team to be more responsive to production errors.
It is also important that, together with microservice architecture, a full CI / CD process will allow teams to be more independent and self-organizing.

Use Anthos platform for better performance and lower costs

Not every part of the service is equally heavily used by customers. The problem with old systems is often the lack of scalability. You cannot allocate a different amount of resources for service components, and possible performance problems affect the operation of the entire website. Separation of the application into microservices connected with the usage of Kubernetes Engine will solve all these problems and more. It will be possible to automatically manage resources to use them as efficiently as possible - to reduce costs while ensuring continuous availability and satisfactory performance.

Security at every stage of the application lifecycle

To ensure the highest level of security for your security for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, Anthos provides best practices at every stage of the application lifecycle. Every security practice and infrastructure element is made with the Defense-in-depth in mind. This concept is based on the introduction of multiple independent layers of security, which increases the level of protection by providing redundancy in case of security control failure or vulnerability exploits.

Use Kubernetes Secrets to protect sensitive data

While most configuration data do not contain sensitive information, nearly every system needs some credentials data used for integration with other systems. These are very sensitive data - unauthorized people can misuse them. For this reason, they should not be stored as regular text, but always encrypted and access to them should always be limited to the minimum. In the case of Anthos, this can be achieved with Kubernetes Secrets. Secrets are special objects which are intended to provide greater security than plain text or Config Maps. Of course, Anthos can also integrate with other third-party solutions, such as Vault by Hashicorp, which can additionally increase security or functionality.

Security patching to keep solution safe

There is no software without bugs, and the more complex the system becomes, the more third-party solutions it uses. The key to maintaining a safe environment is therefore to implement security patches as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this often requires spending time tracking software development and manually updating software. When using Anthos, the matter is simple. Google scans the containers that Anthos uses and implements patches on an ongoing basis. On the user's part, it is enough to update Antos once a month to always have an up-to-date and secure platform.