Over the past 15 years working in the area of cloud computing, I’ve had a front row seat to its incredible evolution and the transformative impact it has had on how businesses operate and deliver value. It’s been amazing to watch enterprises of all sizes get more and more out of infrastructure investments, seeing some of the fantastic projects and services delivered as a result.

But throughout the digital transformation, one thing has remained – the pressure on businesses to deliver innovative applications and services at speed, in order to stay competitive. In today’s ever evolving world of technology, the ability for a business to rapidly build and deploy applications is the difference between success and falling behind.

However, I’ve seen firsthand how managing the underlying infrastructure, servers, and deployment processes can be a significant challenge for development and operations teams. Too often, valuable time and resources get spent on infrastructure concerns rather than on core application development. Complex scaling and inability to meet fluctuating demand then compounds the problem.

The risks of not addressing these challenges are real – slow time-to-market, inefficient utilisation of resources, and lost opportunities as competitors surge ahead. Businesses need a better way to empower their developers to deliver value fast.

The Cloud and Container Conundrum

Many conversations with CIOs over the past few years have centred around one of two things; a migration to a container based architecture and a migration into the cloud. Oftentimes it’s both, but as separate projects with separate teams.

Cloud Migration

“We want to be in the cloud in x years”. This has been the tagline for I.T. teams across the globe for years. It’s a lofty goal with a lot of benefits. Cloud, particularly IaaS, helps enterprises to lower their capital expenditure, improve performance and availability, enable quick application deployment, and ensure business continuity. This has allowed companies born in the cloud to accelerate their growth past their “legacy” competitors, which has driven a huge transformation of the industry over the last 10+ years, and large established enterprises are on their way too. 

But cloud infrastructure presents several challenges. Setting up intricate IaaS infrastructure can be difficult, especially for complex applications. Configuring and integrating various services to create a cohesive architecture really requires a nuanced understanding of the platform and a background in enterprise architecture.

Of course, as an enterprise, getting security and compliance right is essential too. However, ensuring you are compliant with regulations like GDPR, PCI or HIPAA can also be challenging. 

When you have ten thousand potential configuration choices for each cloud service, it’s going to take an army of people to get their arms around it. 

Container Adoption

As if cloud wasnt a big enough topic on its own, many CIOs have been looking to get some of the other advantages that born in the cloud companies have leveraged, including microservices based architecture, and with it containers. 

The global application container Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 25.87% from 2024 to 2031, according to a new report published by Verified Market Research. The market was valued at $3.77 Billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $29.70 Billion by the end of the forecast period. 

But what’s all the fuss about? Well, containers are lightweight and portable software packages that include all the dependencies needed to run an application. They have been around since the 70’s (yes really!), but have revolutionised software development and deployment since docket emerged in 2013 and made them friendlier for developers.

Some of the major benefits container adoption include:

• Portability: Containers can run consistently across different environments, from development to production, enabling faster deployment and easier migration.
• Efficiency: Containers share the host operating system kernel, making them more lightweight and efficient compared to virtual machines.
• Microservices architecture: Containers enable the development of microservices-based applications, which are more modular, scalable, and easier to maintain.

However, container adoption also comes with its own set of challenges:

• Orchestration complexity: Managing and orchestrating containers at scale can be complex, requiring tools like Kubernetes to orchestrate them.
• Security risks: Containers can introduce new security risks, such as vulnerabilities in container images or misconfigured orchestration platforms.
• Learning curve: Adopting containers requires learning new technologies, tools, and practices, which can be a steep learning curve for development and operations teams.

Enter Heroku

Heroku can significantly simplify both cloud adoption and container adoption simultaneously. As a fully-managed and enterprise-ready container platform in the cloud, organisations get the benefits of cloud migration and containerization without the steep learning curve and large operational overhead. This allows development teams to focus on delivering value to the business, while Heroku manages the underlying infrastructure and platform.

Over the few months in my role at Heroku, I’ve had the privilege to speak to many new and long-time Heroku customers and fans (developers love Heroku!). I’ve been super impressed with the breadth of value Heroku provides, including some of the following highlights:

• Abstracted complexity: Heroku abstracts away infrastructure management and container orchestration complexities, allowing developers to focus on writing code.
• Seamless deployment: Deploying containerized applications is as simple as pushing code to a Git repository, with Heroku handling the rest. This can reduce deployment times by up to 75%.
• Managed services: Heroku provides a wide range of managed services, such as databases (Heroku Postgres), caching (Redis), and monitoring, which can be easily integrated with containerized applications.
• Scalability and reliability: Built on AWS, Heroku’s platform provides the scalability and reliability of world-class cloud infrastructure. Applications can easily scale horizontally to handle traffic spikes of 50x or more with no manual intervention.
• Infrastructure-as-code: Heroku’s app.json file simplifies deployment, ensures consistency across environments, and enables efficient scaling.
• Microservice architectures: Heroku enables developers to easily build, run, and manage applications adhering to the twelve-factor methodology, a set of best practices for creating scalable, maintainable, and portable software-as-a-service apps.
• Extensive add-on ecosystem: A rich selection of over 200 add-ons (elements.heroku.com) allows developers to easily extend Heroku’s functionality and integrate with third-party services.
• Seamless Salesforce integration: As a Salesforce company, Heroku tightly integrates with the Salesforce platform, empowering developers to build customer-centric applications that harness the power of Salesforce data.

By leveraging these features, Heroku customers are rapidly deploying applications, effortlessly scaling, and simplifying their data management, enabling them faster time-to-market and optimisation of their app performance.

The Road Ahead

As the world of enterprise I.T. continues to evolve, the ability to rapidly deliver innovative applications is only going to become more critical for businesses to stay competitive. Platforms like Heroku that empower developers to build without infrastructure constraints will play an increasingly vital role.

In the space of containers specifically, Heroku has been a pioneer in cloud native principles, shaping industry practices like “The Twelve-Factor App” for building and deploying software. Bob Wise, Heroku CEO recently announced that Heroku is joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Platinum member. This signifies Heroku’s strong commitment to advancing cloud native technologies and also of course contributing to the open source community.

As a Platinum member, Heroku will have a seat on the CNCF Governing Board and take an active role in supporting the CNCF’s mission to make cloud-native computing ubiquitous. 

Heroku is also a founding member and active maintainer of the Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNB) project, which is in the CNCF incubation stage. Joining as a Platinum member marks a significant milestone in Heroku’s journey and reflects the deep commitment to the evolving cloud native landscape.

I’m pumped to see how Heroku continues to evolve and to see the real-world impact it will make in enabling businesses to accelerate application delivery. It’s a powerful tool in the cloud technologist’s toolkit for harnessing the benefits of the cloud and containers while minimising the challenges.