Transitioning a containerized application to a cloud-based service involves several steps beyond the typical build-and-test cycle, including building and publishing a container image to a registry, which can be public or private, and then deploying updates automatically. This process can be simplified using infrastructure as code, allowing developers to manage container registries and image deployments across various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Docker Hub. The article demonstrates how to prepare a container registry, build, publish, and consume a simple container image, using code examples in multiple languages supported by Pulumi. It showcases the creation of a basic Nginx web server container and its deployment within Kubernetes, highlighting the use of Pulumi's infrastructure as code capabilities to automate the setup and management of container registries and deployments. The article emphasizes the ease of integrating this process with CI/CD systems for continuous deployment, allowing for scalable and automated management of application updates and infrastructure resources.