Introduction to Workflow Orchestration
Workflow orchestration is the automation of a workflow or multiple tasks. In other words, it handles multiple automated tasks to execute a single significant process or workflow.
What is Workflow?
It is a set of sequences or steps of tasks and data processes between these steps. In other words, it tells us about the work's execution and data flow. In the previous workflow, the stage connects to the next one, which means data from earlier steps processes to the next one. It is not a workflow if these steps are individual and no data flows between them.
What is Orchestration?
It configures, manages, and coordinates computer applications and services automatically. It is different from automation. Automation is automating a single task to make our business more efficient and productive, but it automates the whole process and workflow, which may contain different disparate systems.
Cloud Automation is an all-around term describing the tools and processes that aim to reduce manual efforts to manage complex multi-cloud environments. Click to explore about our, Orchestration vs Automation
What are the various types of Workflow Orchestration?
We have various types of orchestration, but we will be discussing only three of them. These are:
Cloud
Cloud orchestration helps to start, deploy, or provision servers, manage networks, and gain access to services on the cloud. Its role is to manage interactions between workloads on private or public clouds.
Service
Service orchestration provides end-to-end solutions. It includes designing, creating, delivering, and running an application.
Release
Release Orchestration helps to manage and orchestrate a software's end-to-end release pipeline. Thus, it takes care of the tasks and status of the release pipeline.
ARO tools enable enterprises to scale release activities across multiple, diverse, and multigenerational teams, technologies and development methodologies. Source: Gartner, Inc
What are the best tools for Workflow Orchestration?
Choosing the right tool for orchestration is an essential task. It can help speed up progress as these tools have to execute repetitive manual tasks. For coherent and clear cross-automation, choosing a platform that brings Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy logic, Natural Language Processing, etc, is necessary. We have various tools and software which are useful for it. Some of them are:
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Kubernetes: Kubernetes is an open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and automating computer application deployment and scaling.
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Ansible: Ansible is appropriate for managing all environments, from setups with limited instances to enterprise environments with many thousand instances.
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CFEngine: CFEngine is an open-source tool that automates the configuration management process, simplifying complex tasks.
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Terraform: Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as a code that helps enable you to create, modify, and enhance infrastructure securely
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Cloudbees: It helps reduce risk and optimize software delivery.
An open-source configuration management tool that helps you get a desired state of infrastructure and crush the complexity of infrastructure scaling. Click to explore about our, Ansible Configuration Management
What are the Use Cases of Workflow Orchestration?
Highlighted below are the use cases:
Case 1
Client Introduction: Spotify is an international media provider. It is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
Story: Spotify is an early adopter of docker and microservices. He has containerized microservices since 2014. They are using Helios, which is an open-source homegrown container orchestration system. They migrated from on-premise data centres to Google Cloud in 2016-2017. Now, they have over 200 autonomous engineers working there.
Day by day, as they grew by late 2017, it became difficult for them to handle work using Helios with a small team.
Then, they adopted Kubernetes, which was grown up at that time. Kubernetes added velocity, reduced cost, increased efficiency, and aligned the tools and industry on best practices. When they are replacing Helios, they can run both of these alongside. During migration, services are running on both, so risk is reduced while adopting Kubernetes. Hence, in 2018, they can use the API and extensible features of Kubernetes to support and interface legacy systems. In 2019, they addressed their last remaining technology.
Their 150 services have migrated to Kubernetes. Now, they need to spend less time on manual tasks. They can perform the same job in seconds or minutes that took hours previously.
Case 2
Client Introduction: Babylon is a health service provider. It provides remote consultation in the United Kingdom.
Story: They are using different technologies. Many products leverage technologies such as Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, which are expanding their organization daily and starting to expand to other countries. However, they don't have enough in-house computing power to run particular experiments in these fields. To solve this problem, Babylon migrated to the Kubernetes platform. The infrastructure team has started using Kubeflow, a toolkit for machine learning on Kubernetes. They created their Kubernetes core server and deployed Kubeflow. They also orchestrated the whole process of google DevOps.
Thus, this process helps Babylon increase work efficiency. Kubernetes machine learning has the capability of scheduling and scalability, allowing it to do much.
Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications, whether on laptops, data center VMs, or the cloud. Click to explore about our, Rocket Chat Deployment with Docker and Kubernetes
What are the benefits of Workflow Orchestration?
The below mentioned are the benefits:
Automation
Automation is one of orchestration's benefits. It helps increase efficiency, productivity, and accuracy and reduces the time spent performing tasks, reducing operational expenses. These tasks can be automated on-premise, cloud, or hybrid configurations.
Efficiency
Continuous delivery of changes and automation helps the organization increase its efficiency.
Communication
It improves cross-department communication. In a release, it becomes easy for the manager to communicate with others in that department. A centralized dashboard helps to provide clear and consistent information about releases. It helps everyone get a clear overview of things.
Cost Saving
It provides excellent efficiency in workflow. Orchestrating workflow, which contains fewer manual operations, helps to make significant revenue and promotes the economical usage of resources.
Reduction of errors
When humans perform tasks, there is a higher chance of mistakes. Orchestrating these tasks reduces manual errors. It enables a consistent and reliable environment by utilizing predictable processes in predictable situations.
Simplified Optimization
It automates workflow with various individual subtasks and acts as an automation integrator. It ensures complete maintenance of all workflow elements in an integrated and harmonized way.
What are the major challenges of Workflow Orchestration?
The big challenge is new technology, which is a technological change. It is challenging for the user to adopt it as it is now, and it takes time to change the mindset. Because every new change needs risks, getting people's mindsets to adopt it is a big challenge.
Workflow Orchestration helps automate, streamline, and optimize processes and workflows. Organizations can use their workforce to focus on other tasks rather than manual and repetitive ones. Adopting it can help the organization work effectively and efficiently, increasing the Return on Investment and revenue.
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