The term 'containers' refers to lightweight, portable software environments that encapsulate applications and their dependencies. Containers facilitate the deployment and scaling of applications across different computing environments, ensuring consistency and isolation regardless of the underlying infrastructure. They allow developers to package applications along with their libraries and configurations, improving efficiency and simplifying the deployment process. By leveraging containerization, organizations can achieve better resource utilization, faster deployment cycles, and easier management of microservices architectures, ultimately enhancing agility and scalability in software development.