Why Cloud Native? #

Everyone is talking about applications being built in a cloud-native landscape these days. What exactly is cloud-native, and why it is so important?

Before we dig deeper, let’s look at an interesting statement. According to IDC, by 2022, 90% of all new apps will feature microservices architectures that improve the ability to design, debug, update, and leverage third-party code; 35% of all production apps will be cloud-native.

Clearly, the future belongs to cloud-native applications. Let us now look at the definition of cloud-native.

A cloud-native (or cloud-based) application is the one which is created in the cloud and is built as microservices packaged in containers.

These applications are developed in components that can be altered without causing shutdown or downtime to the other components and eventually causing no disruptions to the end-user.

The microservices architecture is a modern way of building the functionality of the application in multiple smaller software services, better known as microservices. Each microservice is like an independent module that is designed to serve a specific task. All of them communicate with each other to support fully functional software. These are packaged in containers that are independent of each other and thus can be scaled up further with automation and orchestration processes.

While cloud-native is relatively a newly-coined term, enterprises were using cloud-enabled applications for a long time. Though at times both cloud-native and cloud-enabled are used interchangeably, there is a huge difference between these two terms and their functionality. A cloud-enabled application is the one which is made in a static environment on in-house servers and is merely a traditional enterprise software enabled for and compatible with the cloud.

Being cloud-native is a different ball game altogether. It is dynamically orchestrated, platform-agnostic, and supports full-scale virtualization, harnessing the true and complete power of a cloud. The emergence of cloud-native applications has led enterprises to tread the path of digital transformation as such applications are scalable, faster, automatically deployed, and support continuous delivery.

On the other hand, a cloud-enabled application is tweaked to work in a cloud atmosphere. They do share a few similar functionalities as that of cloud-native ones, but they do lack the flexibility to operate in a full cloud environment.

Key Feature Comparison #

Let’s see the basic difference between these two methodologies and why cloud-native is the way to go for the future.

So, there is clear advantage that cloud-native applications enjoy over the cloud-enabled. Cloud-native applications provide additional superior functionality to make the systems more cohesive and adapt quickly to the changes in a fast-paced environment.

A cloud-native application makes an enterprise-ready to embrace the onset of digital technologies. It provides them an edge to compete in a challenging environment because with a scalable architecture, they can focus more on differentiating their underlying business rather than investing in infrastructure. Also, as an added advantage, the quicker implementation and scalability provided by these cloud-based applications provides the enterprise improved time to market and more business opportunities to their disposal.

Key Benefits of being Cloud Native #

• Decreased time to market: Through cloud-native solutions, enterprises can move to DevOps or even NoOps by automating those decision points. Further IT operations time can be reduced by transforming decisions about provisioning, scaling, continuous integration, regression testing, and zero-downtime deployment into automated tasks. This enables businesses to solve new problems while leaving known problems to automation. By maintaining an equilibrium of the right teams, culture, and technology, enterprises can ship faster, boost innovation, and increase agility.
• Lower costs: With features such as elastic computing, auto-scaling, metered billing, and pay-per-use models, cloud-native computing helps organizations move away from costly always-on infrastructure and redirect those savings toward new feature development. Indirect cost savings can also arise from the increased resilience and reduced downtime that can result from the redundancy, fault tolerance, loosely coupled services, and auto-recovery automated by cloud-native architectures.
• Extensibility and security: Cloud-native architecture patterns are based on loosely coupled microservices, which can greatly reduce the operational and security risk of massive failures. Containerization tools, meanwhile, have increased the modularization of applications into smaller, more manageable chunks. Among the results are increased agility and extensibility, as companies can add or update new modules without having to rebuild entire applications.

Conclusion #

Undoubtedly, a cloud-native application is a game-changing technology. As the world is experiencing a digital disruption in day to day life, more are opting for tailor-made cloud applications to deliver on the business requirements and get an edge from the competitors. The cloud-based architecture is continuously evolving by enabling enterprises to be adaptive and respond quickly to the business changes, making the most out of available business opportunities.