What does cloud native mean?

Cloud native refers to an approach to software de­vel­op­ment in which ap­plic­a­tions are spe­cific­ally designed to run in the cloud. They are scalable, flexible, and leverage modern tech­no­lo­gies such as con­tain­ers, mi­croservices, and DevOps practices.

Cloud computing offers many ad­vant­ages for busi­nesses. These include easy scalab­il­ity of IT services, or­gan­isa­tion­al flex­ib­il­ity, remote access, and reduced hardware costs. To fully benefit from these ad­vant­ages, ap­plic­a­tions must be spe­cific­ally designed for and operated within a cloud en­vir­on­ment. This is precisely where the cloud native de­vel­op­ment approach comes into play.

This approach focuses on de­vel­op­ing ap­plic­a­tions as in­di­vidu­al mi­croservices, which are not run on-premises but on container-based, agile platforms. The result is native cloud ap­plic­a­tions (NCAs) that fully leverage the strengths of cloud ar­chi­tec­ture.

How does cloud native work?

The cloud native approach is based on four pillars that are in­ter­twined and in­ter­de­pend­ent. On the technical end, you have mi­croservices and container tech­no­lo­gies that were spe­cific­ally developed for the cloud en­vir­on­ment and are fun­da­ment­al to the cloud native approach. Each mi­croservice performs only a single function and can be combined in a container with everything needed for its execution. These con­tain­ers are portable and provide de­vel­op­ment teams with sig­ni­fic­ant flex­ib­il­ity, such as when testing new services.

On the strategy end, you have DevOps processes and con­tinu­ous delivery. After all, when de­vel­op­ing a properly func­tion­ing cloud native ar­chi­tec­ture, you need both de­vel­op­ment teams (de­velopers = Dev) and IT op­er­a­tions (op­er­a­tions = Ops). Good cloud native ap­plic­a­tions are thus created through close col­lab­or­a­tion of all parties involved. With agile DevOps practices, the best solution for end users is pursued from the very start. As part of the ongoing col­lab­or­a­tion, the de­vel­op­ment team keeps adding specific product features to mi­croservices which are delivered auto­mat­ic­ally using con­tinu­ous delivery processes.

Features of cloud native ap­plic­a­tions

Cloud native ap­plic­a­tions are defined by a set of distinct char­ac­ter­ist­ics that dif­fer­en­ti­ate them from tra­di­tion­al apps:

• Mi­croservice ar­chi­tec­ture: A key feature of cloud native ap­plic­a­tions is that they consist of multiple in­de­pend­ent services, each with its own runtime en­vir­on­ment. These services are loosely coupled and operate in­de­pend­ently from one another and from the un­der­ly­ing in­fra­struc­ture. They can be freely combined, du­plic­ated for use in other ap­plic­a­tions, and reused as needed.
• APIs: Com­mu­nic­a­tion between mi­croservices takes place through stand­ard­ised APIs, giving users the im­pres­sion that they are in­ter­act­ing with a single unified ap­plic­a­tion. These services are designed in such a way that they could also be in­teg­rated into other ap­plic­a­tions.
• Auto­ma­tion: Another key feature of cloud native services is their highly pre­dict­able behaviour and extensive auto­ma­tion. Unlike on-premises ap­plic­a­tions that run in tra­di­tion­al server en­vir­on­ments, the per­form­ance of a cloud native ap­plic­a­tion is precisely tailored to current needs. As a result, the entire ap­plic­a­tion never has to be scaled as a whole. Instead, in­di­vidu­al mi­croservices are upgraded in­de­pend­ently based on demand. These processes often run auto­mat­ic­ally, triggered by pre­defined events.
• Avail­ab­il­ity: With tra­di­tion­al on-premises software, rolling out in­di­vidu­al updates often results in downtime for the affected service. This issue is elim­in­ated with cloud native ap­plic­a­tions. The cloud-native ar­chi­tec­ture allows de­vel­op­ment teams to deploy changes—such as new product features—in real time. This means that users have immediate access to new features as soon as the code is deployed. In the event of service or in­fra­struc­ture failures, dis­trib­uted recovery mech­an­isms are in place to ensure that users ex­per­i­ence no no­tice­able dis­rup­tions.

What are the ad­vant­ages of cloud native?

In cloud en­vir­on­ments, the cloud native approach offers several ad­vant­ages, which we’ve sum­mar­ised in the following sections.

Flex­ib­il­ity

The major advantage of the cloud native approach is its flex­ib­il­ity. Since all services run in­de­pend­ently of their en­vir­on­ment and mi­croservice con­tain­ers are portable, de­velopers have a great deal of freedom. For example, it is possible to start or stop multiple container instances. This is par­tic­u­larly useful in testing and de­vel­op­ment stages. Unlike with mono­lith­ic ar­chi­tec­ture, changes in the code of a single mi­croservice will not affect the entire software. This means that there is less risk with new software releases.

Scalab­il­ity

Another major advantage is the scalab­il­ity of the ap­plic­a­tions them­selves, thanks to which companies do not have to make costly hardware upgrades as the demands on a service grow.

Avoid lock-in effect

Since in­di­vidu­al services are not tied to specific hardware or operating systems, there is no strong com­mit­ment to a single provider. Cloud native ap­plic­a­tions can run on any platform which allows IT op­er­a­tions to choose the provider that offers the best bang for their buck and meets their needs.

Timeli­ness and auto­ma­tion

The fact that updates and changes are available im­me­di­ately when using the cloud native ar­chi­tec­ture allows companies to respond to customer and market demands with the greatest possible speed. The high level of auto­ma­tion afforded by or­ches­tra­tion solutions like Kuber­netes also minimises human error when it comes to con­fig­ur­a­tion and operation.

Con­clu­sion

With the numerous benefits that cloud native offers DevOps teams, it is just a matter of time before this software de­vel­op­ment approach becomes com­pletely main­stream. Ul­ti­mately, it is its ability to adapt quickly to evolving business re­quire­ments and tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tions that makes cloud native the ap­plic­a­tion model of the future.