Virtualization - One Step Ahead

Virtualization software is an essential concept in IT when it comes to the simplified and effizientere use of resources. This concept has already often proven itself in the past.

One of the first fields where this concept has been used very successfully and extensively is the virtualization of hardware. While it was initially difficult and costly to provide hardware resources, to react to changing requirements in this respect and to make optimum use of existing capacities, this became easy to handle with the introduction of virtual machines and flexibel. From now on, virtualization made it possible to provide several virtual servers on one hardware, each with its own operating system, and to provide each of these servers with exactly the required resources (e.g. main memory and CPU) within the scope of the available hardware, and to adapt flexibel to this. Also the move to a new hardware had become easy.

The next step followed with the virtualization of complete environments with the introduction of containers. Due to the increasing number of configurations, tools and safety requirements it is becoming more and more difficult to roll out applications in a different environment. The introduction of containers brings the concept of apps to the server. The container contains the complete environment of an application, i.e. the application itself, but also all resources it needs at runtime. It contains an application with all its dependencies such as libraries, utilities, static data, etc. This reduces the installation, update or deinstallation of an application to a simple copy process or a simple file deletion.

With the virtualization of business cases, databoxx goes one step further. Here, not only the hardware or the environment of an application is virtualized, but the application itself. Any data sources can be connected here via configuration. The data from this data source is automatically connected to the data from other connected data sources. Via an API gateway, any REST APIs can be made konfiguriert to allow external systems to communicate with the virtual application. Via a dashboard mechanism a UI for the virtual application configuration.

This allows new applications, including necessary connectors to external systems, to be made available easily and flexibel, without extensive development projects, thus virtualizing entire business cases.