Cloud Native is an approach to creating and updating responsive, scalable, error-tolerant apps, wherever they are: in public, private or hybrid cloud. Storing applications and systems in the cloud comes with benefits such as serverless computing, no on-premises infrastructure, and IoT. Cloud technology encourages businesses to become more resilient, faster, scalable, flexible and responsive in a fast-changing environment. There are different definitions of cloud native.
Pivotal, a cloud software company, describes cloud native as “an approach to building and running applications that fully exploit the advantages of the cloud computing model.”
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation adds that “cloud-native technologies are best for empowering the business to create, build, process scalable applications in the environment of public, private and hybrid cloud architecture. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach. These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.”
The computing foundation further states that:
“Cloud native computing uses an open-source software stack to be:
- Containerized. Each part (applications, processes, etc) is packaged in its own container. This facilitates reproducibility, transparency, and resource isolation.
- Dynamically orchestrated. Containers are actively scheduled and managed to optimize resource utilization.
- Microservices-oriented. Applications are segmented into microservices. This significantly increases the overall agility and maintainability of applications.”
Benefits of cloud-native applications
- A modern cloud-native application enables iterative approaches such as Agile and DevOps processes unlike traditional monolithic apps, making it easier to manage.
- With cloud-native applications, incremental improvements can be done automatically to improve customer experiences and offer a competitive edge. Changes and improvements can be made non-intrusively, minimizing downtimes because they are made of microservices that run in containers.
- Scaling up or down tends to be easier with the elastic infrastructure that carries cloud native apps.
