Principles and benefits of going cloud-native

Cloud-native has changed the dynamics of the software industry and how people think of deploying and operating software applications.
As per Wikipedia, Cloud-native computing is an approach in software development that utilizes Cloud Computing to "build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds".
In short, it lets you build and run the applications based on the cloud computing delivery model.
Let’s develop a little background on what is cloud computing – "It refers to the on-demand availability of resources like cloud-storage and computes power without the intervention of direct active user management"
Note that the cloud-like delivery is not limited to the public environment, it is equally appropriate for private clouds. What it essentially focuses on is how the applications are created and deployed and not on the where part.
As per Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Cloud native computing uses an open-source software stack to be:
- Containerized
- Dynamically orchestrate
- Microservices-oriented
Understand the key components and terms:
There are a lot of terms that need more discussion and clarity before we go any further ahead, so let’s understand them first:
- DevOps: It is a combination of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It is a cross-functional culture that promotes faster delivery of high-quality software.
- Container: It packages everything needed to execute an application, for example, Virtual Machine, application server, and the application itself, into one executable package. The container is then run in a virtual environment with the benefit of portability as the application becomes independent of its environment. It can be thought of as a computing medium for deploying individual microservices.
Containers come with the advantage of horizontal scaling, where multiple instances of a container can be added or removed based on the user demand.
With this comes the next point of concern, as to how to manage the current system load and decide whether to start additional nodes or shut down the already running ones. This brings us to the concept of orchestration.
- Orchestration: It monitors the system and automatically starts/shuts down the container in order to manage the load between the active application instances.
- Microservices: As the name suggests, a microservice is a small and largely decoupled service. Each microservice provides a small application with a well-defined boundary and API which is easy to operate by a small team. Many such microservices together constitute the overall functionality of the system.
Breaking up a large application into multiple smaller applications comes with the benefit of faster implementation and ease of adapting to the new requirements.
Efficient scaling is its other benefit: If a single microservice receives more load, it proves very cost-effective to scale up the system of microservices while other services continue to run seamlessly as before. This saves initiating additional instances of a complete monolithic system.
But if building microservices allows such efficient use of cloud resources, then where is the challenge? Well, microservices do allow scalability but add complexity at the system level. Can this added complexity be reduced? To a certain extent, yes, it can be reduced by either making the microservices as independent of each other as possible or by providing efficient communication between the dependent services.
- Continuous delivery: It enables the organizations to push the incremental software changes into production automatically.
Principles of cloud-native:
- Building applications based on microservices
- Packaging the microservices as containers
- Using DevOps for infrastructure deployment
- Continuous delivery of applications to end customers
Benefits of cloud-native model:
- DevOps team which is a combination of developers and operations team enables speedy delivery of software i.e. lesser lead time.
- Scope of human error is more when infrastructure scaling is done manually (owing to manual creation and management of server), which is eliminated in cloud-native offerings as the infrastructure scaling is automated
- Cloud-native abstracts away the underlying infrastructure dependencies and allows the teams to focus only on software. Whereas the application has a close dependency on the underlying OS, hardware, storage, and backing services in the traditional application system.
- Continuous delivery promotes a faster response to customer demands as the individual features/updates are released as soon as they are ready.
- Microservices allow the developers to make quick updates and scaling leading to agile development and deployment.
- Cloud-native allows faster shipping of code owing to better alignment between business requirement and the IT team
- Cloud model-based deployment allows organizations to build applications that can run hassle-free on any cloud – public or private.
Netflix, Uber, and WeChat are some of the companies that have adopted the cloud model and are able to deploy services much faster.
The ones mentioned above are a few examples of the impact the cloud-based model has on organizations’ business. You can check this link to read more about the migration objective, strategy, and results of some of the companies that adopted the cloud-native model.
In summary, going cloud-native is the solution to cater to the ever-growing demand of the users with zero scopes to downtime and errors. But, the organizations have their concerns in terms of what the right approach towards cloud migration is, how to decide between on-prem infrastructure and public cloud providers, how to build a scalable structure, which needs appropriate research and time investment before they start the cloud journey.
End Notes:
I hope you found this article useful where we discussed an introduction to what is a cloud-based model and how the organizations are catching up with the advancements in this field in order to gain a competitive edge. Would be great to know your suggestions or if you want me to explain any specific areas or details, those are welcome as well.
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