What is Meant By Cloud Native?
Cloud native refers to the software development approach that involves complete utilization of the cloud ecosystem along with its technologies to build, deploy, manage, and run applications in the cloud environments.
All modern organizations opt for this approach as it helps them build a scalable, resilient, and flexible application that they can quickly make changes and bring upgrades to meet customer’s requirements. This approach utilizes cloud technologies like containers, microservices, Kubernetes, services, immutable infrastructure, and APIs to run a fault-tolerant application in a public, hybrid, and multi-cloud environment.
Nowadays every user expects continuous improvement and seamless responsiveness in their application, requiring every organization to be strategic and bring frequent changes in the app. It helps organizations support quick and frequent application updates while keeping everything agile.
It plays a major role in driving digital transformation and enables developers to use cloud tooling and services for faster application development while reducing operational tasks. Basically, it gives developers a comprehensive platform for building cloud native applications.
How Does a Cloud Native Approach Benefit Business?
Modern businesses are widely benefited from the cloud native approach as it supports them in different ways to build a resilient, scalable, and flexible cloud-native application. Here are the benefits that the cloud native approach has on offer:
Enhances Efficiency
Cloud native approach brings agility to the application development process by introducing DevOps and CI/CD concepts. It provides the developers with cloud services, automated tools, and modern designs that help them to quickly build and deploy scalable applications.
Brings Resilience
Another advantage of the cloud native approach is that it negates operational and security problems and enables developers to create a resilient cloud-native application. While developing cloud applications, developers also won’t have to worry about application movement between environments and deal with architecture to update processes.
Provides Competitive Advantage
With numerous cloud ecosystem features, developers can easily deploy products quickly to the market, and that too without spending much time on testing. It promotes DevOps culture to build a robust application and achieve the organizational goal of user-readiness, providing a competitive advantage over other businesses.
Maintains High Availability
Organizations with the help of cloud-native technologies and solutions can build and deploy robust applications that won’t stop operating under any circumstances. Developers can easily make changes or scale the app to cater to customer’s requirements and deploy updates without causing downtime.
Improves Developers Productivity
The availability of cloud-native tools and services helps developers navigate through all the requirements of cloud environments and build applications more efficiently. It helps them eliminate most of the legacy issues and improve overall productivity.
Security and Compliance
Another area where the cloud native approach offers a substantial approach is security and compliance. Cloud native security enables security teams to get complete visibility and perform continuous monitoring of their cloud.
Importantly, it provides cloud security as a managed service and prevents you from spending resources and time. It also helps in staying compliant with regulations and laws by supporting different compliance requirements.
Helps in Catering to Evolving Business Needs
Cloud native approach brings agility through microservices and containers, leading to improved orchestration according to the organizational need. Cloud native processes let businesses bring updates to the application or services and that too without making changes to the monolith architecture.
Reduces Overall Cost
Adopting a cloud native approach enables organizations to reduce operation costs as you won’t have to invest in any physical infrastructure and maintain them. This helps save on long-term costs and reduces overall operational complexity.
What is a Cloud Native Application Architecture?
Cloud native application architecture indicates the software components that developers use to build, deploy and run a scalable cloud native application in the cloud environment. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has included numerous technological blocks that build a cloud native application architecture.
Microservices
Microservices serve as independent software components that use independently deployable services for each function and work together to work on a cloud native application.
Each microservice is a small software component that focuses on specific issues and they communicate with each other to work as a whole. It enables developers to make changes to specific microservices without hampering the application.
API
Application programming interface (API) plays a crucial role as it acts as a communication tool to help application programs communicate with each other. It is important for cloud native applications because it enables loosely coupled microservices to work together.
Immutable Infrastructure
Immutable infrastructure indicates the process where servers and VMs are replaced rather than changed when a cloud native application is deployed.
When there is a requirement for higher computing resources, the servers and VMs are replaced and the application is moved to a more powerful server. Thus making sure cloud native application deployment is a consistent process.
Containers
Containers are the smallest computational unit that helps developers to deploy applications regardless of their environment. These are basically software components that make them execute properly and run faster.
It not only carries microservice codes and various important files but also containerizes the microservices to help applications run independently. Thus developers use containers to put microservices with their specific dependencies and deploy the application on the cloud.
Service Mesh
It is regarded as an application layer in the cloud infrastructure, responsible for facilitating communication between different microservices. Service mesh is widely used by developers when they want to add some function to the application without embedding new application code.
Orchestration
Orchestration serves as a critical pillar of every cloud native application because it makes all the components work together. Basically, it serves as a complete process of cloud native integration and ensures continuous delivery.
Due to orchestration, end users can modify the workflow and determine how the applications can work together.
What is Cloud Native Application Development?
Cloud native application development indicates the complete process of developing and deploying cloud native software. It is a practice that enables developers to increase delivery speed and introduce accurate features to meet evolving user requirements.
Here are application development practices followed by many developers:
Continuous Integration
Continuous integration or CI is an application development practice where developers integrate code changes into a central repository frequently.
This also enables developers to make frequent changes as they can identify issues quickly, enhancing the overall efficiency of application development. CI tools evaluate the code quality of every code change and ensure development to seamlessly bring new functionalities.
Continuous Delivery
Continuous delivery or CD refers to the process of bringing applications developed in the CI process into a production-like environment. In this software practice, the development team makes sure all the microservices are ready to be deployed into the cloud whenever needed.
The developers utilize automation tools to introduce changes like features or bug fixes in the application. The CD works in conjunction with CI for seamless application delivery.
DevOps
DevOps is an application development approach or culture that promotes the collaboration of the development team and operation team to increase the quality, security, and efficiency of software development and delivery process.
It is a design philosophy that supplies the developer and operation team with DevOps tools to automate the development process, leading to decreased time to delivery.
Serverless
Serverless is a cloud native development model that is used along with microservices and it allows developers to deploy codes from a cloud-provider-managed server infrastructure.
The resources are allocated dynamically in serverless computing, meaning cloud infrastructure automatically scales up and configures according to the requirement. Thus it improves scalability and reduces operation costs.
What is Cloud Native Stack?
Cloud native stack signifies the tools and technologies leveraged by the development team to build, deploy and run a cloud native application. These tools and technologies are segregated into different layers and they are:
Infrastructure Layer
The infrastructure layer serves as the foundation layer in every cloud native stack where it encompasses the primary resources. This layer involves an operating system, network, storage, and various computing resources, all of which are managed by a third-party cloud provider.
Provisioning Layer
The provisioning layer serves as a vital layer in the cloud native stack because it carries the cloud services needed to allocate and configure the cloud environment. This layer is also made up of tools needed to create and secure the infrastructure.
Runtime Layer
The runtime layer comprises all the cloud native technologies that the containers require to run and function in the cloud environment. It is made up of cloud data storage, networking capability, and codes to start a container.
Orchestration and Management Layer
This layer acts similarly to an operating system where they are responsible for integrating all the cloud components together to ensure they function as a single unit. Various orchestration tools like Kubernetes, OpenShift, or Docker are utilized in this layer to help the team deploy and manage all the containerized applications on different systems.
Application Definition and Development Layer
Application definition and developer layers comprise all the software technologies that are used by developers to build a cloud native application. From database, container images, and messaging system to CI/CD pipeline, all the cloud technologies are included in this layer.
Observability and Analysis Tools
This layer is all about monitoring, assessing, and enhancing the overall system health of the cloud native application. This layer provides you with different tools that help in monitoring the CPU usage, latency, and memory usage and ensure nothing comes in the way of operation.
Cloud Native Applications vs Traditional Enterprise Applications
When it comes to cloud native applications, it differs from traditional enterprise applications in many ways. Let’s take a look at how cloud native application gets the edge over the traditional approach:
Operating System Abstraction
Cloud native applications are developed in containers, making it possible for developers to build them regardless of the underlying operating system. Thus, developers can eliminate a lot of errors and save time.
However, this is not the same with traditional applications as it has to be built on an operating system, leading to many errors.
Consistent Timeline
Cloud native applications are mostly developed as microservices so it comes with a consistent and set timeline. Unlike traditional applications, cloud native applications require to be aligned with monolith architecture.
Automated Scalability
Another area where cloud native applications highly differ from traditional ones is the automated scalability factor. Cloud applications can easily scale due to containers and microservices but traditional applications need shifting to a large infrastructure for scaling.
Appropriate Capacity
When it comes to cloud computing, developers only get the appropriate amount of resources for a specific process. However, enterprise applications include many unnecessary processes that often make it difficult for developers to manage.
Operation Cost
The operation cost of cloud native applications is quite minimal as resources can be managed according to the requirement. However, with enterprise applications you need to allocate large resources, leading to higher costs.
Things to Consider When Using Cloud Native Applications
While you consider cloud native applications, there are certain things that you should keep in mind:
Prioritize Specific Workloads During Workloads
While transitioning from legacy systems to cloud native computing, not all IT functions will integrate seamlessly. You should prioritize those specific workloads that would benefit from cloud integration.
Understand Whether You Need To Buy a Platform or Build One
Cloud native computing helps you in both partnering with a cloud solution and building applications from scratch.
If you want a fresh cloud application for your organization, you can build it completely but it takes a lot of time and doesn’t let you fully utilize cloud transition. However, you can take assistance from a cloud platform where you can put your cloud computing processes to build a robust application.
Train Your Employees
When you decide to start a cloud native application, you need to arrange training programs for your employees. You need to immerse them completely in the cloud ecosystem so that they get accustomed and learn to make the most of it.
Avoid Reinventing a New Application
It is best to avoid reinventing a new application and utilize microservices to innovate new features whenever there is a requirement.
Implement Robust Security
Cloud native application requires strong security protocols that will prevent the application from being exploited. You should implement strong access control, implement encryption, follow secure coding practices, and ensure software updates.
Final Words
Every modern developer utilizes cloud native approach to build and deploy their web applications. It has become a standard norm for many organizations as it helps them to achieve the flexibility, scalability, and resilience that was not easy with legacy applications.
Not only has it allowed organizations to conveniently cater to customer requirements but also make changes without hampering the operation.
There are many other benefits that have compelled many organizations to transition from a legacy approach to cloud native. In this article, we have put forward all the necessary information to help you understand cloud native and how adopting cloud native applications can benefit you.
