Speed and Agility are defining attributes of businesses today. A company can lose out to competition if they fail to accelerate the release time of an innovative product or feature. Now, one of the best ways to ensure that is going for the Cloud native application development approach. No wonder the global cloud computing market which is valued at around 480.4 billion USD in 2022 according to Fortune Business Insights is expected to reach global value of a staggering 832.1 billion USD by 2025 according to a Cloudwards.net survey. 

What is Cloud-native application development approach? 

It is an approach to build and run apps across clouds – public, private or hybrid — for businesses with high velocity and need for frequent deployments. Merely migrating an app to cloud or microservices architecture doesn’t do the trick anymore. Moreover, cloud native approach is where the app is built and run with scalability as aim.  

Difference between Cloud native and traditional application development: 

Traditional application development is based on monolithic architecture where everything is interconnected, every little detail, every little function and everything is built on top of each other, so if one thing fails, everything fails. This essentially means that it is more prone to downtime and tough to upgrade. Basically, these applications have a client/server environment. These applications are called ‘Legacy’ for a reason, as they are now mostly outdated.  

Cloud native architecture on the other hand with cloud practices like Microservices, Containers, DevOps, and PaaS help in easier commoditization. Organizations can develop scalable and stable applications in multi and hybrid cloud environments with innovative cloud solutions that ensure faster time-to-market, reduced risk with automation, reduced cost and hyper scalability.   

Let’s look at 4 key principles of Cloud native app development: 

  1. Automation is key: Cloud native approach has made one of the best practices of software development, Automation, easy. Some of the common aspects for automating cloud native systems are infrastructure with updates to it, CI/CD where it is needed to automate build, testing, and deployment of instances making up the system. One should also ensure scaling up and down depending on load. 
  2. Architect iteratively: It’s never too much to try and simplify the existing architecture further. The cloud native systems allow you to carry out continuous innovation even in case of architecture especially with the market needs changing constantly. Iterative architecting also brings in place a cycle of building, observing, and modifying for further innovation. 
  3. Be sharp about State: While it is easier to deploy and scale stateless apps, it tough to be truly stateless even with cloud native approach. Storing of state is a difficult aspect of designing cloud native architecture. It is important to architect systems in a way so that it is known where and how the state will be stored whilst striving to design as many stateless components as possible as it helps in maximizing scalability. 
  4. Security is important too: Cloud native architecture has always been prone to external attacks as it is not inherently secure. It is important to include security adjustments into automation besides regularly auditing resources. Firms should also try to architect in a way that each component should strive to protect itself, which can make the architecture resilient. 

Cloud-native architecture helps optimize current workloads easily to achieve cost savings and higher performance. Knowing these key principles will ensure more efficient usage of cloud solutions for development.  

Cloud Native Application Development is more often opted by organizations that have high business velocity and looking for speedy deployments. Aspire System can help you build and manage Cloud native application or can even help you migrate to microservices architecture or just legacy modernization. 

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