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Why is cloud native the future of software?

Why is cloud native the future of software?

Many businesses today consider the cloud first when developing new applications. However, in light of recent technical advancements, it is preferable to consider “cloud native” solutions. Cloud native applications make use of platforms and processes that were created in the cloud. They are extremely scalable, simple to alter, and can link to cloud services to enhance capabilities without requiring a lot of coding. So what is cloud native? Why is it considered the future of software and does it suit your business? 

What is Cloud Native?

Cloud native is a software strategy for developing, deploying, and managing modern applications in cloud computing settings. Modern businesses aspire to design highly scalable, flexible, and resilient apps that can be updated fast to meet client expectations. They accomplish it by utilizing contemporary tools and methodologies that are built to assist application development on cloud infrastructure. These cloud native solutions enable rapid and frequent updates to applications without disrupting service delivery, giving early adopters an inventive and competitive advantage.

What is a cloud native application?

Cloud native application is a software program made up of a number of small, interconnected services known as microservices. Traditionally, developers created monolithic apps with a single block structure that contained all of the necessary functionality. Software developers use the cloud native method to divide down capabilities into smaller microservices. Because these microservices operate independently and consume little computational resources, cloud-native apps become more nimble.

What is Cloud Native?

5 pillars of cloud native

The cloud

The cloud service paradigm is fully utilized by systems built for the cloud. These systems heavily rely on Platform as a Service (PaaS) compute infrastructure and managed services and are built to thrive in a dynamic, virtualized cloud environment. They use automation to automatically resize, scale, and destroy the underlying infrastructure, treating it as disposable and provisioning it in a matter of minutes.

Modern design

How would you create a native-cloud app? What would your building design look like? What guidelines, patterns, and ideal practices would you follow? What issues with the operational and infrastructural would be crucial?

Containers

Cloud-native software is greatly facilitated by containers. Containerization of microservices is seen as the initial stage in the cloud native journey.

Containers maintain consistency across settings and offer mobility. You can isolate the microservice and its dependencies from the supporting infrastructure by combining everything into a single package.

Any environment that houses the Docker runtime engine will allow you to deploy the container. Additionally, pre-configuring each environment with frameworks, software libraries, and runtime engines is no longer necessary thanks to containerized workloads.

A container has a substantially smaller footprint than a full virtual machine because it shares the host’s resources and the underlying operating system. The more microservices that can be operated concurrently on a given host thanks to their reduced size.

Backing services

Many diverse auxiliary resources, including data stores, message brokers, monitoring, and identity services, are required by native cloud application systems. Backing services are what these offerings are called. The licensing, provisioning, and management of those resources would be your responsibility if you were to host your own backing services.

A wide range of managed backing services are available from cloud providers. You merely use the service; you don’t own it. Performance, security, and maintenance are all the responsibility of the cloud provider, who manages the resource at scale. The service includes monitoring, redundancy, and availability. Open a ticket, and the provider will resolve your issue. Providers guarantee service level performance and provide complete support for their managed services.

Cloud-native systems prefer cloud vendors’ managed backing services. A best practice is to think of a backing service as an attached resource that is dynamically bound to a microservice and has configuration information (a URL and credentials) kept in an external configuration.

Automation

To achieve speed and agility, cloud-native systems use microservices, containers, and current system design, as demonstrated. But how do you set up the cloud environments where these systems run? How do you deliver app features and updates quickly? How do you complete the puzzle? Enter Infrastructure as Code, or IaC.

Automation of platform provisioning and application deployment is possible with IaC. You essentially integrate your DevOps procedures with software engineering procedures like testing and versioning. Automation, consistency, and repeatability characterize your infrastructure and deployments.

5 pillars of cloud native

Pros and cons of cloud native

Pros 

When businesses develop cloud native software applications, they gain competitive benefits in a variety of ways: 

  • Boost productivity: With the help of agile techniques like DevOps and continuous delivery brought forth by cloud native development (CD). To create scalable apps quickly, developers make advantage of automated technologies, native cloud services, and contemporary design practices.
  • Cost savings: By using a cloud-native strategy, businesses can avoid spending money on the installation and upkeep of pricey physical equipment. Long-term operational expense savings come as a result of this. Building cloud native products at a lower cost may also help your clients.
  • Assure accessibility: Companies may create durable and highly available apps using cloud-native technologies. Features upgrades don’t disrupt service, and businesses can increase app resources during busy times to satisfy customers.

Cons 

  • Dependence on the cloud: Cloud-native apps are very dependent on the uptime and efficiency of the cloud provider, which raises some questions in the event of a failure or interruption of service.
  • Security risks: Cloud-native applications could be more susceptible to security breaches if not set up and managed correctly.
  • Complexity: Cloud-native apps, particularly in big, distributed contexts, can be challenging to administer and use.
  • Inability to switch to a different provider in the future due to vendor lock-in: Cloud-native apps may be dependent on a specific vendor.

Cloud-native applications Vs. Traditional business applications

Traditionally, less adaptable software development methodologies were used to create enterprise applications. Before releasing them for testing, developers often worked on a sizable batch of software functionalities. As a result, typical enterprise apps were not scalable and took longer to deploy.

Cloud native technologies, on the other hand, use a collaborative approach and are very scalable across several platforms. Cloud native application building, testing, and deployment processes are significantly automated by developers using software tools. Microservices may be quickly set up, deployed, or duplicated, which is not achievable with traditional applications.

Cloud-native applications Vs. Traditional business applications

What does “cloud native application development” entail?

The process of creating and deploying cloud-native applications is known as cloud native application development. For cloud native programming to succeed, a culture transformation is necessary. To shorten the software delivery cycle and offer correct features that satisfy shifting customer expectations, developers employ certain software methods. Below, we provide some typical cloud native development techniques.

1. Continuous integration

Developers routinely and error-free integrate changes into a shared code base using the continuous integration (CI) software practice. Because you can discover and address problems more quickly, development is more effective when small, frequent adjustments are made. CI technologies automatically evaluate the quality of the code for each change, giving development teams more confidence to introduce new features.

2. Continuous delivery

Cloud-native development is supported by the software strategy known as continuous delivery (CD). Through CD, development teams can guarantee that the microservices are always prepared for cloud deployment. To minimize risk when making changes, such as adding new features and repairing bugs in programs, they use software automation tools. Together, CI and CD enable effective software delivery.

>> Learn more: What is CI/CD in DevOps?

3. DevOps

A software culture called DevOps helps development and operations teams work together more effectively. It adheres to a design philosophy that supports the cloud native architecture. Organizations can shorten the software development lifecycle by using DevOps principles. DevOps tools are used by engineers in operations and developers to automate cloud native development. 

4. Serverless

In a cloud-native paradigm known as serverless computing, the underlying server architecture is entirely managed by the cloud provider. Because the cloud infrastructure automatically expands and configures to match application requirements, developers employ serverless computing. Only the resources an application utilizes are charged for by the developers. When an app ceases functioning, the serverless architecture immediately releases its compute resources. 

What does "cloud native application development" entail?

What is cloud-native stack?

The term “cloud-native stack” refers to the many cloud native technology layers that programmers utilize to create, maintain, and run cloud native applications. They fit into the following categories:

  • Infrastructure layer:  The cloud-native stack’s groundwork consists of the infrastructure layer. Operating systems, storage, networks, and other computing resources are all part of it and are handled by external cloud service providers.
  • Provisioning layer: The provisioning layer consists of cloud native services that allocate and configure the cloud environment.
  • Runtime layer: Cloud native technologies are made available via the runtime layer, which is necessary for containers to operate. This consists of networking ability, a container runtime, and cloud data storage.
  • Layer of orchestration and management: Orchestration and management is in charge of combining the many cloud components into a single entity. It functions in a manner akin to an operating system in conventional computers.
  • Layers of application definition and development: The software tools used to create cloud native applications make up this tier of the cloud native stack. To construct cloud apps, for instance, developers use cloud technologies including communications, databases, container images, and continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) tools.
  • Tools for observability and analysis: These tools track, assess, and enhance the system health of cloud applications. To make sure there is no degradation in the quality of the app’s service, developers employ tools to track metrics like CPU consumption, memory usage, and latency.

Why is cloud native computing the future of software?

Why is cloud development so valuable in the context of the future? The following 3 elements are what shrewd businesses need to consider.

1. Adaptability

Cloud-native applications can change to the needs of the business without creating dependencies that force customers to stick to a specific version of the software.

Cloud-native applications are flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the business without imposing dependencies that compel users to adhere with a certain software version.

For instance, if a business wants to offer a mobile app, it can create a mobile user experience and use APIs to directly access server data. any UI-related code. Because of this loose connection, modifications to either application can be made without causing it to crash.

2. Scalability

Cloud-native applications leverage software-defined infrastructure to lessen or do away with hardware dependencies. Instead of needing the addition of more expensive CPUs, memory, and storage to existing servers, this solution adds commodity servers for horizontal scalability. Giant cloud services like Amazon and Facebook are made possible through horizontal scalability.

3. Portability

Developers may design applications that operate on anything from cellphones to mainframes using containers without modifying the code. It is ideal to have the capacity to deploy apps anywhere, wherever they are needed, especially with the rising popularity of “edge computing,” a distributed processing architecture that pushes automated decisions to the outer reaches of the network.

Why is cloud native computing the future of software?

To put it briefly, cloud native solutions appear to be the vogue right now. A change in that tendency appears to be occurring. Services related to the cloud are also increasingly gaining traction in tandem with this trend. Most of us also cannot contest its advantages. You should now have a better understanding of cloud native technology and its uses thanks to this article.

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