Cloud-native app development is a new application development approach that focuses on accelerating the company’s creative process. It focuses on how an application is designed and delivered to prepare the company for the present and future.
You should develop the cloud-native application since it provides a constant development and administration experience across public, private, and hybrid clouds.
Software developers use various tools and strategies to take advantage of cloud computing’s flexibility and scalability.
Cloud-native applications dominate today’s world. Cloud-based technology is used to design, test, and deploy the application. Thus, it aids in the development of new applications and the optimization and integration of current ones.
This article will describe what a cloud-native application is and some of the most critical factors to consider while developing one.
In the simplest terms, a cloud-native application is a program created specifically for cloud computing. It’s a software program designed to run on a specific platform or device.
The cloud-native application is used in any cloud system and promises to improve delivery by enabling platform operations and DevOps capabilities.
These applications take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing as a delivery paradigm. However, it is not like standard cloud-based monolithic applications in terms of architecture and delivery.
It’s extremely durable, manageable, and visible. Cloud-native apps also use a microservice architecture, which makes them versatile and adaptable to cloud architectures.
As a result, this strategy focuses on developing new apps while also updating existing ones.
You might be asking yourself, “How can this be done?” There is, therefore, a cloud-native application development platform where services that simplify and combine DevOps, microservices, continuous delivery, and Containers can be built and managed.
Importance of Cloud-native application
Cloud-native programs are built for speed, efficiency, robustness, durability, and visibility in the cloud. As a result, there are numerous advantages to designing a cloud-native application.
The fascinating thing is that cloud-native application’s architecture is built so that it can be deployed independently.
Because each microservice is conceptually isolated and scales independently, building a cloud-native application is uncomplicated. Hence, if one microservice is altered, it will not affect the others.
If any updates are required, a cloud-native architecture can handle them.
First and foremost, a cloud-native application is a well-designed program that can survive even in an infrastructure failure, which is why it is extremely resilient.
Furthermore, because failure in one service has no impact on other services, this application is reliable.
As the processing and storage resources can be scaled out as needed, cloud-native applications save money.
In this application, you may quickly create virtual servers, and you can use containers to increase the number of microservices.
Furthermore, this application prevents hardware overprovisioning. As a result, it saves not only money but also time and resources.
Cloud-native application has various deployment options over the network, so it is very easy to manage.
Due to the division of the application into smaller services, one team can focus on building and deploying individual microservices.
At the same time, the team does not have to worry about how other microservices will connect with it.
The DevOps automation allows the continuous integration and installation of software modifications deployed on a routine basis, so the cloud-native application is automated.
In addition, blue-green and canary deployments are used to make app improvements without disrupting the user experience.
Now, we will see the differences between Cloud-Native Apps and Traditional Enterprise Apps in this section.
The operating system is dependent on traditional application architecture. It enables developers to create strong dependencies between the application and the underlying operating system, hardware, storage, and backup services. It complicates and risks moving and growing the application over new infrastructure.
The architecture for the cloud-native application, on the other hand, is meant to allow developers to leverage platforms to abstract away dependencies. Thus, the team’s major focus is software development.
Traditional architecture is enormous and designed to meet terrible capacity predictions, with minimal flexibility to extend beyond design parameters to increase capacity.
The capacity of a cloud-native application platform, on the other hand, is just right. Furthermore, using a cloud-native runtime simplifies application lifecycle management, enabling failure recovery with minimal downtime.
In terms of pricing, Cloud-native is more cost-effective because you only pay for what you are using.
Traditional applications, on the other hand, need you to configure data storage and all services. As a result, Cloud-native application architecture reaps long-term benefits.
DevOps, a combination of people, processes, and tools that aid in development and operations functions to speed and smooth the transfer of final application code into production, was made possible by cloud-native.
On the other hand, traditional IT uses an over-the-wall handoff of completed application code from developers to operations, subsequently running it in production.
As a result, when compared to cloud-native IT, there will be more disagreement, late delivery, and low staff morale in traditional IT.
Manual scaling is used in traditional applications, which means human operators are involved, whereas computer automation is used in cloud-native applications.
It means that with a cloud-native application, human error is eliminated, and the system and server are automated.
On the other hand, traditional application operators are sluggish to appropriately identify faults and frequently fail to deploy at scale due to the high level of complexity.
Traditional architecture has one major flaw: it lacks an automated backup and recovery system, which is present in cloud-native applications.
The container runtime and orchestrator for cloud-native applications provide a dynamic, high-density virtualization overlay on top of a VM, making it perfect for hosting microservices.
On the other hand, there is a plethora of misplaced code, periodic backups of production data, and missing documentation with traditional architecture.
Cloud-native apps follow a set of guidelines or “contracts” that aim to increase resilience by ensuring predictable behavior. Cloud platforms’ automated, container-based infrastructure influences how software is produced.
Traditional applications, on the other hand, suffer from being customized in terms of architecture and development. Furthermore, many of the systems require time to design and have a high level of dependability. As a result, they are highly interventionist and manual and prone to single points of failure.
The IT team of a cloud-native application focuses on making individual software updates and releasing them as fast as possible. In contrast, traditional application software is distributed regularly and has no additional dependencies than the artificial release vehicle.
As a result, continuous delivery is the most effective way to compete, win clients, and increase income.
Hence we can summarize the difference between cloud-native apps and traditional enterprise app in the table as below:
| Cloud-Native Apps | Traditional Enterprise Apps |
| OS abstraction | OS-dependent |
| Right-sized capacity | Oversized capacity |
| Cost-effective | Less Cost-effective |
| Collaborative | Siloed |
| Automated scalability | Manual scaling |
| Automated Backup and Recovery | Usually poor Backup and Recovery |
| Immutability and Predictability | Not Immutable, Hard to Predict |
| Continuous Delivery | Waterfall development |
The following are some considerations to keep in mind when adopting Cloud-Native Applications:
Microservice-based applications are cloud-native applications that are broken down into a series of separate services or modules.
Application program interfaces allow these modules to communicate with one another (APIs).
Cloud-Native Applications use software that logically separates the program, allowing it to execute without the need for physical resources.
The main benefit of using a container-based program is that it prevents applications from using up all of the shared resources on the host. They also make it possible to run several instances of the same service at the same time.
APIs are primarily used to connect microservices and containers even while facilitating maintenance and protection.
It acts as a communication channel for the microservice and as a gluing agent between weakly linked services.
Container orchestration systems are used to manage the sometimes complex lifecycles of containers.
Resource management, load balancing, scheduling of restarts after an internal failure, and provisioning and deploying containers onto server cluster nodes are all made easier with this tool.
Each cloud-native application development process employs a variety of software technologies. The following are some of the tools that are used:
| Tools | Use |
| Docker | Using a shared operating system creates, deploys, and manages virtualized application containers. |
| Kubernetes | Manage and orchestrate Linux containers, deciding how and where they should run. |
| Terraform | Version control is used so that users can see when and where resources have been changed. |
| GitLab CI/CD | Enables users to automate the testing and deployment of software. |
| Node.js. | Create real-time apps like chat, news feeds, and other microservices with this library. |
It is clear from all of this article that implementing cloud-native applications to improve operational efficiency has both advantages and disadvantages. However, the benefit outweighs the disadvantage.
The cloud-native application is expected to be the future of software development, according to experts.
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