Understanding Cloud-Native Applications: The What, Why and How

Cloud-native applications are apps designed to fully leverage the benefits of the cloud computing delivery model.

These applications live in the cloud and not in an on-premise data center. But just existing in the cloud doesn’t make an app cloud native. It takes a fundamental change in how they’re developed and deployed – well beyond where they’re hosted – to make an app fully cloud native.

What Are Cloud-Native Apps?

Cloud-native apps have a variety of characteristics and features that differentiate them from traditional applications:

• Microservices architecture. This model refers to a collection of loosely coupled services that handle the different functions of an application. Using a microservices architecture instead of a monolithic approach is what gives cloud-native applications much of their speed and scalability.

• 12-Factor app. This refers to a set of 12 design principles developed by Heroku to guide the creation of applications for the cloud. These include practices around version control, environment configuration, isolated dependencies, executing apps as stateless resources and more.

• Platform-as-a-Service. Any given cloud-native application can run on hundreds of microservices. Provisioning new environments for each of these services in the traditional way is time and resource intensive. Using a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model simplifies this process and enables rapid provisioning for numerous microservices instances. This ensures the scalability of cloud-native apps.

• API-based. Independent microservices in a cloud-native application communicate via API calls. This preserves their loosely coupled nature and keeps the app fast and scalable.

• Cloud-native applications are robust, with minimal to zero downtime. Their microservices architecture, coupled with being in a highly available cloud environment, makes this possible.

Why Choose Cloud-Native Apps?

The way cloud-native applications are developed brings with it a distinct set of advantages for enterprises.

Speed

To reach potential customers before your competitors do, you have to get to market faster; to retain customers, you have to adapt to change quickly. Both are possible with cloud-native applications. The microservices architecture of cloud-native apps makes them easy to develop, test and deploy, as compared to traditional, monolithic applications.

The cloud-native model also enables smaller, more frequent and easily reversible release cycles. So, you can constantly introduce new features, functions and bug fixes – while having the option to quickly rollback updates if necessary.

Finally, with independent microservices, updates to one service don’t need to be integrated with the code of the rest of the services. By cutting this extraneous integration time, new functionality can be rolled out quickly.

Scalability

Their microservices architecture makes cloud-native applications highly scalable. This is because each microservice handles a specific function within the application. In cases of increased demand, the application can be scaled by creating more instances of only the high-demand service. And you can provision new instances of microservices in seconds because the application is based on the PaaS model.

Also, with cloud providers like AWS you get auto scaling and elastic load balancing solutions that make it easier to dynamically scale resource utilization for cloud-native applications.

Cost Efficiency

For monolithic applications, scaling to meet new demand involves creating a new instance of the entire monolith. This is very time and resource intensive. It also means paying for more hardware resources in the cloud, even though the spike in demand may only be for a limited set of features.

With cloud-native applications, scaling means increasing instances only for specific microservices. That saves money as it eliminates the need to consume resources that won’t be used. It’s also easy to turn off the added resource consumption after demand subsides.

Multitenancy can create secondary cost savings as well. Several different microservices can dynamically share platform resources, further reducing expenditures.

Availability

Cloud-native applications are highly available thanks to their microservices architecture. This works on two levels.

First, if one service goes down, the rest of the application remains available. This is because the app is designed with fail safes and can provision another working instance of any failed microservice.

Second, the containerized nature of microservices means that they are packaged with their runtime environment. This makes them self-sufficient and able to work uninterrupted, no matter where they’re hosted. For example, if an entire availability region of your cloud goes down, the application can simply be moved to a different region. It will remain available, with your users none the wiser.

How to Get Started with Cloud-Native App Development

Building cloud-native applications involves sweeping changes to how you build and deploy applications. This kind of transformation will take some preparation, as well as careful strategic consideration.

Develop your enterprise strategy

The shift to cloud-native applications should serve specific business goals – like creating new products and services, gaining new market share or increasing revenues. These business goals should be kept front and center while creating your cloud strategy.

This will help you avoid falling into the technology-first trap. Yes, cloud-native apps will involve the use of new technology, but locking down the technology aspects first, before you’ve built a strategy, can be disastrous. The technology you choose should serve your business goals. Figure those out first or your initiative isn’t likely to be successful or sustainable.

Begin by asking three key questions:

• What are the business goals supported by going cloud native?

• Who are the right people to lead your efforts – both in-house and from external partners/vendors?

• What technology solutions best suit your requirements?

Transition away from your monolithic application

If you’re working with a fairly complex monolithic application that’s been built over time, resist the temptation to simply lift-and-shift to the cloud. Because of the tight coupling and the myriad dependencies that your app has developed over the years, it’s unlikely the monolith will run well on the cloud. Put together a plan for breaking it down into constituent services that can be shifted to the cloud.

Moving towards a microservices architecture can seem daunting at first because you’re dealing with hundreds of different services instead of one. But by employing best practices – like using event sourcing microservices guidelines and deploying with Docker – you can manage the process effectively.

Take the CI/CD approach

Adopting a continuous integration/continuous development (CICD) approach is key to leveraging the speed of cloud-native apps. This strategy enables the rapid development, testing and deployment of new features and helps break down traditional dev team silos. Frequent, well-tested releases help keep your cloud-native app updated and allow for continuous improvement.

Learn More About Cloud-Native Apps with Material

If you’re considering a shift to a cloud-native application model, you likely have a lot more questions. We’ve only touched the surface of what cloud-native apps can do, why so many businesses have already adopted them and how they can help both dev teams and businesses.

Material’s experts are ready to answer your questions. We can help you build a comprehensive cloud strategy and select the solutions that meet your needs – as well as help you deploy and maintain agile cloud-native applications. If you’re ready to learn more, reach out. Let’s start the conversation.