Alibaba Cloud debuts cost effective container service
Alibaba Cloud Container Compute Service is designed to simplify and optimize workload deployment using container technology.
Alibaba Cloud Container Compute Service (ACS) will be available to international customers beginning this month. ACS by Alibaba Cloud is designed to simplify and optimize workload deployment using container technology.
A form of virtualization that bundles programs with everything they need to run, containers make it easier to deploy applications consistently across different hardware and systems. The benefits in terms of efficiency and resource optimization have made containers a mainstream development method.
A Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Container Management for the second consecutive year, ACS also supports different architectures and can be deployed in multiple cloud environments including public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Currently, ACS has been applied across a wide range of industries.
According to the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, ACS uses Kubernetes as its interface. The platform will offer a serverless container service that provides compute resources compliant with container standards.
Designed to overcome the complexities with Kubernetes configuration, resource management, and on-demand elasticity, ACS integrates containers and resources based on Alibaba Cloud's Shenlong architecture to allow maximum scaling of computing resources. Moreover, ACS offers a solution capable of reducing computing power costs by up to 55%.
"As the deployment of workloads on container technology becomes increasingly prevalent, we developed a more accessible solution that would anticipate the evolving needs of our customers," said Jiangwei Jiang, General Manager of Infrastructure Products, Alibaba Cloud.
Jiang also stated that ACS represents a big step forward in how businesses can utilize container technology, offering cost-efficiency and ease of use to support businesses unleashing productivity.
Apart from being fully compatible with Kubernetes, ACS also supports seamless migration to the cloud for both open-source ecosystems as well as self-developed products.
In a press release, Alibaba Cloud stated that users can continue using familiar Kubernetes management methods and file formats. There is also no need to pre-purchase nodes so users can simply declare their workload requirements and ACS will match them with the necessary underlying compute resources. Overall, Alibaba Cloud believes this minimizes the demand for additional costs and human resources in infrastructure maintenance.
By providing customers with the capability to eliminate the need for users to manage underlying nodes and clusters, ACS significantly reduces costs and technical barriers associated with container deployment. At the same time, its pay-as-you-go model helps customers avoid over allocated, and scale on demand, enabling the optimization of costs during periods of high and low usage.
"ACS has transformed the container orchestration service into a comprehensive computing product. Users benefit by paying only for the compute capacity that they use,” added Jiang.
With over 20% growth in 2024, the container management market is expected to reach US$4.5 billion by 2028, according to Gartner. Gartner also predicts that by 2027, more than 75% of all AI deployments will utilize container technology as the underlying compute environment.