Introducing Cloud-Native Apps

The global usage of cloud-native technologies, particularly containers and container orchestration tools, has risen dramatically in the past few years. This has been confirmed by SlashData's latest State of Cloud-Native Development Report, which was created for CNCF.

The fact that the world currently has over 6.5 million cloud-native developers is making the concept of cloud-native one of the hottest topics right now.

Although some tech professionals think this is just buzz, it seems like cloud-native isn't going away any soon. What is more, many believe that this is what the future of software development will look like.

In this article, we'll introduce the concept of cloud-native apps and see how you can benefit from them.

What are cloud-native applications?

A cloud-native application is software that is built specifically for cloud computing. These apps are intended to make use of the unique properties of a cloud computing software delivery architecture and are operated and hosted in the cloud.
Small, autonomous, and loosely connected services make up cloud-native apps. They're built to provide well-known commercial benefits, such as the capacity to incorporate user input for continual development quickly.

In a nutshell, cloud-native app development is a technique to accelerate the creation of new apps, as well as the optimization and integration of current ones. Its mission is to offer the apps that people demand at the speed that businesses require.

Cloud-native apps are created with the goal of providing a unified development and maintenance approach across different cloud environments. With cloud-native apps, businesses can boost the performance and reliability of their software products. Some of the most significant benefits include automation of a big part of the development process and on-demand resource provisioning.

This video by RedHat provides a great explanation of what cloud-native apps really are:

The basic concepts of cloud-native apps

Here are some of the key terms that are connected to cloud-native apps:

Cloud infrastructure is made up of a number of components that are all linked together to form a single architecture that supports business processes. Devices, configuration management, storage, and network equipment may all be included in a typical solution.

Microservices represent a set of interconnected services that cloud-native applications are made of. They are flexible, easily maintainable, independently deployable, and organized around business domains. This design enables huge, sophisticated applications to be delivered quickly, often, and reliably.

Containers are what microservices get stored in. The most commonly used containers are Docker containers. You can deploy microservices independently if you run them in separate containers. Containerization eliminates the possibility of conflict or friction across languages and frameworks. Containers are orchestrated with tools like Docker Swarm and Kubernetes.

Agility is the main characteristic of the services of cloud-native applications, as they have their own lifecycles. You can use multiple CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) pipelines to deploy and maintain a cloud-native app.

A variety of languages and frameworks are used to build a cloud-native application. Every service can be made with a different language and framework as they are totally independent.

APIs intended to work natively within cloud-native apps are known as cloud-native APIs. In a cloud or multi-cloud context, cloud-native APIs may be written, deployed, and maintained. They work with any cloud provider, whether private, public, or hybrid.

Automation is one of the best features of cloud-native apps. They work nicely with the infrastructure-as-code idea. To administer these vast and complicated systems, a certain amount of automation is essential.

Resource allocation is completely transparent, and every team has complete access to its own resources.

As there's often confusion between containers and microservices, here's a good description by Ev Kontsevoy:

A container is a useful resource allocation and sharing technology. It's something DevOps people get excited about. A microservice is a software design pattern. It's something developers get excited about.

Benefits of cloud-native applications

Cloud-native apps have a lot of advantages thanks to the cloud's features. Here are some of them:

• Reduced costs. Capacity for computing and storage may be scaled up and down as necessary. This reduces the requirement for overprovisioning of technology. Cloud-native apps may be fully operational quickly. Containers may also be utilized to increase the number of microservices that can operate on a single host, which saves a lot of resources.

• More innovation. Developers utilize fully automated CI/CD pipelines to evaluate and publish new code to production using efficiently. Businesses may put new ideas into practice in minutes or hours rather than days and weeks, resulting in increased innovation and competition.

• Scalability & flexibility. Elastic scaling, also known as cloud bursting, allows you to scale computation, storage, and other resources almost infinitely. Built-in scalability will enable businesses to meet any value chain without the need for additional infrastructure design or deployment.

• Reliability. Recovering from errors in the event of a cluster breakdown is also quicker with the capacity to completely restore. Higher uptime promises to make companies more efficient, allowing them to provide high-quality apps.

• Easy monitoring. Automation is used to distribute functionalities and modifications in cloud-native apps. Developers can keep track of all modified microservices and modules. As applications are broken down into smaller services, developers may work on a single microservice without having to think about how it affects others.

• Exciting technology. Developers like exciting technologies, and this is one of them. It allows them to focus on code and product quality instead of having to worry about infrastructure. Employing modern technologies will attract top developers and increase innovation and engineering quality in your company.

Should you migrate to cloud-native apps?

Cloud-native apps may function in a highly dispersed way, preserving independence and distributing resources based on the application demands because they take advantage of cloud infrastructure.

If you think this is something your company and technology need, it's time to think about migrating to cloud-native apps. With scalable cloud-native apps, you will be able to take all the benefits cloud infrastructure has to offer.