What Are Cloud-Native Applications?

A cloud-native application is a software program that’s built to run within a cloud computing environment. Cloud-native apps take advantage of the nature of the cloud delivery model, leveraging the elasticity, scale, resiliency, and flexibility that the cloud offers to enable organizations to move with greater speed and agility. Built with a microservices architecture, cloud-native apps enable quick and frequent updates to applications without impacting service delivery, giving organizations a competitive edge.

Cloud-native applications are built with several key technologies.

• Microservices are the building blocks of cloud-native applications. These loosely coupled, reusable programs are designed to integrate into any cloud environment. Microservices work together to make the application run, but each microservice can be scaled independently and continuously improved through iterations, making the development of cloud-native applications faster and more flexible. Microservices are often deployed inside containers.
• Containers combine all of an application’s dependencies, including source code, operating system, and libraries, allowing the application code to run in any environment. Containers enable a variety of cloud-native applications to run simultaneously on the same server, even when they rely on different operating systems.
• APIs (application programming interfaces) are collections of resources, most notably URL endpoints, that make it easy for one application to communicate with and integrate with another.
• Software-defined infrastructure replaces hardware like switches with virtualized hardware functionality that can scale up and down easily.
• Dynamic orchestration minimizes the complexity of managing container lifecycles, handling resource management, load-balancing, scheduling restarts after an internal failure, and provisioning nodes of server clusters.
• Service mesh is a layer of software used to manage communication between multiple microservices. The service mesh routes traffic between all of the parts of an application that need to communicate with one another.
• Backing services include resources like message brokers, data stores, security services, and monitoring capabilities.
• Automation enables cloud environments to be rapidly provisioned with features and updates, accelerating releases and improvements without causing interruption to the user experience.

Developers use several tools to manage the cloud-native application development process. Kubernetes is a platform designed for management and container orchestration of Linux containers. Docker is an open-source platform for creating, deploying, and managing virtualized application containers that use a common operating system. GitLab is a code versioning system that features continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) software that automates testing and deployment. Any number of programming languages are used to create real-time microservices like newsfeeds and chat. Infrastructure as code tools like Terraform manage versions of deployments so that developers can see when and where resources have been changed.

Cloud-native applications are designed specifically for the cloud. Cloud-based applications are hosted in the cloud and may take advantage of the elasticity and scalability of cloud infrastructure, but they do not take full advantage of the inherent design of cloud architecture.

• Minimal costs. Cloud-native applications enable organizations to take advantage of the scalability of cloud services, eliminating the cost of overprovisioning. Cloud-native apps also allow organizations to avoid the cost of purchasing and maintaining hardware and software on site.
• Greater agility. The microservices within cloud-native applications can scale independently, allowing some components of a software program to be updated quickly without needing to update the entire application. Cloud-native apps offer flexible deployment across the network and are easier to develop and iterate.
• Portability. Because cloud-native applications can be easily ported between different infrastructures, organizations can avoid being tied to the services of a single vendor.
• Enhanced reliability. The use of containers and cloud-native applications means that when one microservice fails, a cloud-native application can continue to operate with minimal downtime.
• Automated management. Cloud-native apps rely on automation to deploy features and updates, simplifying tasks for IT teams.
• Clear visibility. The isolation inherent in a microservice architecture makes it easier for IT teams to understand how applications work together.
• Immense scalability. Cloud-native applications use software-defined infrastructure to minimize hardware dependency, adding additional commodity servers that enable horizontal scalability.
• Zero downtime. Orchestration solutions like Kubernetes enable cloud-native apps to be updated with virtually no downtime.

• Implementing cloud-native architecture requires established DevOps practices that can handle the distributed workflow and responsibilities required to develop microservices.
• Managing the many iterations of cloud-native apps is a highly complicated task that can be overwhelming for development and IT teams.
• Rapid scaling of the containers required for cloud-native apps can introduce risks to enterprise cloud security that — when not properly monitored and remediated — may lead to breaches.
• Migrating from legacy applications to applications built on microservices and containers can lead to complex problems with interdependencies or application functionality.
• Regulations and requirements concerning data location, retention demands, and data privacy require developers to find new solutions for cloud storage and cloud databases that can match the flexibility of cloud-native architecture.

Building cloud-native applications relies on continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) practices. CI consists of making small, frequent changes to code, making it easier to identify and remediate issues faster. CD ensures that microservices are always ready to be deployed to the cloud, relying on software automation tools to reduce risk when making changes.

Traditional, monolithic software programs take longer to build and are released far less frequently than cloud-native apps.

Where cloud-native apps may run on operating systems that have been abstracted, traditional apps require close dependencies between the underlying OS, hardware, and storage, making it difficult to migrate and scale applications across new infrastructure.

Cloud-native apps allow right-sized provisioning, where IT teams can allocate resources as needed rather than provisioning oversized and overbuilt infrastructure designed to meet the needs of potential spikes in demand.