In today’s fast-paced world, with its proliferation of data and devices that create them, this approach is no longer viable. Instead, companies are striving to unlock the value of this data surge and instruct their developers to respond with highly scalable solutions and ever-tighter deadlines.

What is Cloud-Native Computing ?

A new paradigm has emerged, driven by the need for scalability, flexibility, and agility. It is further supported by both the declining cost of cloud computing services and the increasing agility of applications and networks to bridge the performance gap between local and remote computing.

 

Cloud-native applications run exclusively on cloud-based infrastructure and are designed specifically to take advantage of the cloud’s new features and functionality.

To get to this stage, you must first migrate applications from on-premise infrastructure to a cloud-based infrastructure, using the infrastructure offerings as a service (IaaS) from your cloud computing provider. The first advantage is the elimination of initial investment costs. Of course, the process is not as simple as that, but it can be successfully achieved by replicating the on-site infrastructure using software and hardware components that work together.

For example, you can replicate a 50-node cluster by renting and connecting 50 virtual machines in the cloud and installing the same applications and operating systems that run on site.

While offering the standard benefits of cloud computing (such as replacing capital expenditures with operating expenses, flexible on-demand services, and lower maintenance), this type of configuration provides a stepping stone to a 100% cloud-native configuration. The next step is, therefore, to migrate to an environment where your cloud computing provider’s platform infrastructure as a service (PaaS) abstracts the idea of the server operating system and allows the enterprise to focus only on the applications and services they provide, rather than how they deliver those services.

This is the first point of contact with the “cloud native” concept. It requires a redesign of applications and their interactions but means that business imperatives can guide design, and thus results.

Native cloud computing applications go even further. In a PaaS model, the underlying platform provides pre-configured operating system images that require no patching or maintenance and can be scaled automatically based on application load. A native cloud regime extends the PaaS concept by providing developers with a complete abstraction of the underlying infrastructure via a runtime billing model that automatically adapts to each trigger call.

This implies that applications are broken down into their individual functions (small code blocks), using the appropriate language for that function, be it JavaScript, C#, Python or PHP, or scripting languages such as Bash, Batch, and PowerShell. These functions can then be triggered in various ways, including HTTP so that they can react to various events. These are native cloud computing applications, made up of small components that can be developed, tested and deployed quickly. Some companies deploy dozens of new code fragments every day. Why not yours?

 

Conclusion

The concept of cloud-native applications is still in its infancy. However, there is an important dynamic behind the idea of agile applications that deliver results quickly and promote agility while reducing costs. Given that the leading cloud computing service providers support the concept, thus demonstrating business demand, it would be unwise to ignore it.