How ADP Adopted a Container Mindset – InApps Technology 2022

Getting into the container mindset is most important for any enterprise. But in the end, it means interacting with APIs, a part of today’s enterprise developer workflow but still an adjustment when thinking about scaling and eliminating manual labor.

James Ford is a chief architect at ADP, an $11 billion company and a pillar in the human capital management world. Ford and his team have made significant investments in Docker, going from about 1,000 containers in use across the enterprise to now more than 3,000. It’s just the beginning of scale out for the company but already it has done enough to feel comfortable about containers, in particular with security.

The discussion with Ford in this podcast reflects the considerations enterprise companies have to take when changing to a container architecture approach. The value for ADP is in the way Docker may be used across multiple environments, including virtual machines, mainframes, bare metal, Amazon Web Services and Azure.

Ford’s view reflects how important it is to have a container mindset when adopting Docker. But there is another truth that Ford espouses, too: Always disrupt yourself and try not to be too controlling. Experimentation is critical.

How ADP Adopted a Container Mindset

Also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn

In this Edition:

2:35: ADP’s history and how it is using Docker containers.
7:30: The concept of shrink to fit containers.
15:21: The challenges ADP faces with tools in the security scanning space.
19:28: Kubernetes versus Docker image authoring within the current state of the ecosystem.
23:57: How ADP is utilizing Docker Swarm across its environments.
28:34: The benefits of encapsulation and isolation when getting into a container mindset.

InApps Technology is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insight Partners, an investor in the following companies mentioned in this article: Docker.