Improve IT Sustainability with IT Technology – Comparison of an Explore vs. Exploit Strategy (with a Case Study on Containerized Workloads)

The size and complexity of IT systems is growing over time. Therefore, the resource unit footprint of an IT system grows, too. But what impact has an exploration strategy of new technologies to reduce the footprint? Based on a case study of a cloud service from the Volkswagen Group IT an exploration approach is compared with an exploitation approach. It presents the methodical approach and its effects on the resource unit footprint of a micro-service architecture of the IT service. The approach enables the DevOps team to beat Wirth’s law by keeping the footprint at least constant by offering more capabilities and features to their users.