🎡Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)🎡
By 2023, more than 70% of global organizations will be running more than two containerized applications in production, up from less tha 20% in 2019.....
What is Kubernetes ?
Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available.
Why you need Kubernetes and what it can do ?
Containers are a good way to bundle and run your applications. In a production environment, you need to manage the containers that run the applications and ensure that there is no downtime. For example, if a container goes down, another container needs to start. Wouldn’t it be easier if this behavior was handled by a system?
That’s how Kubernetes comes to the rescue! Kubernetes provides you with a framework to run distributed systems resiliently. It takes care of scaling and failover for your application, provides deployment patterns, and more. For example, Kubernetes can easily manage a canary deployment for your system.
Kubernetes provides you with:
👉🏻 Service discovery and load balancing
👉🏻 Storage orchestration
👉🏻 Automated rollouts and rollbacks
👉🏻 Automatic bin packing
👉🏻 Self-healing
👉🏻 Secret and configuration management
What is Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ?
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a managed container orchestration service, based on the open source Kubernetes system, which is available on the Microsoft Azure public cloud. An organization can use AKS to deploy, scale and manage Docker containers and container-based applications across a cluster of container hosts.
Rebalancing supply and demand in healthcare :
"We’ve had to rollout 150 to 200 surgeries in a matter of a week or two so that ability to instantly scale with the Azure platform and the system around that has been absolutely crucial to us as a business." - Keith Nurcombe: Managing Director UK – NHS
Doctorlink
Doctorlink is a digital start-up focused on solving some of the biggest problems in healthcare through the innovative development and deployment of technologies. Amongst its innovations it provides mobile apps to connect patients with healthcare providers for online and urgent triage, video consultation and health risk assessments.
More than 12 million patients use the Doctorlink app around the globe, including the NHS and insurance providers.
Helping the world respond to the pandemic
During the coronavirus pandemic, many more healthcare providers have approached Doctorlink with a view to leveraging its technology.
Cordelia Chuku, Head of Product & Design at Doctorlink, explains, “We’ve seen a vast increase in the number of healthcare providers looking to get technology embedded into their healthcare pathways with their patients.”
The choice of Microsoft Azure has helped in meeting demand
Keith Nurcombe, Managing Director UK NHS at Doctorlink, says the technology platform choices the business made early on are now paying off.
He says, “We always knew that a cloud-based solution was the only way to go. We’ve had to rollout 150 to 200 surgeries in a matter of a week or two so that ability to instantly scale with the Azure platform and the system around that has been absolutely crucial to us as a business.”
Scaling up quickly while maintaining the secure and regulated environment is vital. Nurcombe continues, “All of those things are the things that the Microsoft Azure platform offers Doctorlink: it allows us to scale. The security and the safety and the solidity of that Azure platform has been crucial to us.”
Engaging remotely with clients
The decision by the Doctorlink team to choose Microsoft as a technology partner has paid off in other ways too. Remote engagement with customers has been facilitated throughout the pandemic by the use of Microsoft Teams.
Nurcombe says, “We use Microsoft products now more broadly across the organisation… it’s been a great journey with Microsoft and it’s a journey that will continue into the future as Doctorlink gets bigger and Microsoft continues to support us on that journey.”
