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  4. What is Cloud Native?
Learning Center
March 10, 2022
4 min read

What is Cloud Native?

Kong

With cloud-native technology gaining popularity by the day, it's crucial for businesses to stay up-to-date with its innovative architecture and functionalities. As opposed to traditional monolithic architectures, cloud-native infrastructure adopts a modular design made up of small but powerful components known as microservices! These enable developers to focus on creating high-quality code without wasting time worrying about intricate infrastructures. While containerization further revolutionizes application building through resource efficiency & super easy scalability.

What are cloud-native applications?

Cloud-native applications are constructed to offer businesses with the opportunity to swiftly reply to user feedback and continuously enhance.By taking benefit of the options of cloud computing, as an example self-service, on-demand provisioning, and automated application life cycles, organizations can profit from enhanced scalability, availability, and a faster time-to-market.Cloud-native advancement offers an advance to rapidly construct and modify apps, whereas enhancing quality and reducing risk, delivering organizations a competitive edge.

Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)

In order to comprehend cloud native, one of the main places to begin is with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an open source foundation committed to encouraging and advancing the growth of cloud native computing. They do this by offering a community of resources for cloud native development, CNCF helps organizations adopt the cloud native approaches that are dependable.

The CNCF defines cloud native computing this way:

Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. 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."

Cloud-native approach for businesses

There are a number of benefits for businesses when it comes to adopting a cloud-native strategy. Utilizing cloud resources rather than on-premise infrastructure can result in cost savings and can have a positive impact on TCO. Cloud-native applications, which are made to be highly scalable and resilient, can also help businesses become more agile and scalable. Additionally, cloud-native applications are ideal for development at a rapid pace due to their speed of deployment.

Build and run scalable applications

The emphasis should be on the applications, not the infrastructure. There are certain infrastructure patterns that are common in cloud native environments like immutable infrastructure, for example but these exist in support of building and running scalable applications. Cloud native is about scaling applications more easily and more predictably.

Modern, dynamic environments such as public, private and hybrid clouds

This clarifies that it isn't really about where the application is deployed as much as it is about environments that are dynamic and support automation (as indicated by combined with robust automation). Cloud native technologies and architectures are at home in public clouds, of course, but are also at home in other environments that support robust automation through APIs.

Enabling loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable and observable

It isn't just about technology but also about architecture and approach. Being cloud native means that the architecture and technologies used enable greater resiliency, greater manageability and greater observability than would be possible otherwise.

Make high-impact changes frequently and predictably

The primary business benefit to adopting cloud native computing is enabling the delivery of impactful changes that drive business value. Again, the focus here is on the applications, not the infrastructure; cloud native technologies and architectures enable businesses to innovate quickly and deliver value to their users quickly and safely.

Cloud-native application architecture

Cloud-native application architecture is the design of an application to take advantage of the features offered by cloud computing platforms. It typically involves breaking down the application into small, independent services that are loosely coupled and can be easily deployed on different cloud platforms. This approach enables applications to take advantage of the scalability, elasticity, and automation offered by cloud platforms.

Cloud-native technologies

Although cloud native computing encompasses more than just technology, there are technologies that are commonly associated with cloud native computing. Some of these are mentioned in the CNCF definition above: containers, service meshes and declarative APIs.

Cloud-native application development

Cloud-native application development is the process of developing applications that are designed to run on cloud computing platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM Cloud. Cloud-native applications are designed to be highly scalable, highly available, and optimized for the cloud. Cloud-native applications are typically developed using microservices architectures, which allow for the rapid deployment and scaling of applications. Additionally, cloud-native applications are designed to be resilient to failure, allowing them to quickly recover from any unexpected downtime..

What about cloud-native stack?

Cloud-native stack is a collection of technology and tools used to create and run cloud-native applications. It includes a variety of technologies such as Kubernetes, Docker, and Helm, as well as associated open source projects. These technologies work together to help you build, deploy, and manage applications that are optimized for the cloud. Cloud-native applications are designed to be highly available, scalable, and resilient to failures.

Benefits of cloud-native application development

Cloud-native application development offers a number of benefits. It enables businesses to quickly deploy and scale applications, as well as to reduce costs by utilizing cloud computing resources instead of on-premise infrastructure. Additionally, it allows businesses to take advantage of the scalability, elasticity, and automation offered by cloud platforms.

Conclusion

Cloud-native technology is a software development approach that takes advantage of the features offered by cloud computing platforms. It enables businesses to build, deploy, and manage applications quickly, reduce costs, and take advantage of the scalability, elasticity, and automation offered by cloud platforms. Additionally, a cloud-native stack is a set of technology components used to build and manage cloud-native applications. The cloud-native approach offers businesses a number of benefits, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to take advantage of the cloud.

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