What is Cloud native? And what are its advantages? Listed below are some of the essential features. Let’s start with the definition of cloud-native. A cloud-native application is built on top of a distributed service-oriented architecture. Distributed services are made with a focus on agility, scalability, and self-healing. When creating a cloud-native application, the benefits are broken down into smaller, modular components. You can find more through Fortinet.
Cloud-native architecture
The key difference between native and cloud-native apps is their architecture. Native apps are built on a cloud platform and do not need to be written in the same programming language. This flexibility helps accelerate the development process and drive business innovation. In addition, cloud-native apps can be written in any language and still have a high degree of integration and speed to market. As a result, they are more flexible and easier to manage. REST APIs are used to enable communication between components written in different languages.
Another fundamental difference between cloud-native apps is the way developers deploy software. Instead of deploying a product to the user, the cloud-native architecture enables developers to test their code in production. Developers can quickly add features and then see how they affect performance. In addition, with cloud-native architecture, developers can easily hide or reveal features to test them. As a result, the time to market is reduced, and a business can focus on creating products and experiences, not on the technicalities.
Distributed service-oriented architecture
Cloud-native applications are collections of independent microservices that are packaged into lightweight containers. These containers are deployable across any cloud platform and can scale up and down rapidly. This architecture is also very flexible, allowing developers to replace failed components easily. Download the free eBook Architecting Cloud Native.NET Applications for Azure to get started. The book is available in PDF format. It includes code samples and real-world examples.
Distributed service-oriented architecture (SOA) addresses the complexity of large enterprise applications by providing an architecture for exposing individual services to the outside world. Standard SOA components include an enterprise service bus and a service repository. However, a new microservice architecture has emerged with the rise of cloud-native computing. In this architecture, individual services are exposed to the outside world and each other. Many cloud-native applications use a mixture of third-party services, orchestration platforms, and even custom services.
Dynamic orchestration
One of the core principles of cloud-native architecture is service discovery. Service discovery provides a dynamic service registry that automates service creation, scaling, and recovery via Kubernetes. For example, affirmed’s virtualized Access and Mobility Management Function pod contains three containers, each of which has multiple supplemental sidecars. Dynamic orchestration also makes it possible to use a single code base for all services.
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation outlines the definition of cloud-native computing. It includes three key components: containerization, microservices architecture, and dynamic orchestration. Containerization makes software portable and scalable. Dynamic orchestration involves tools like Kubernetes to deploy and manage multiple instances of an application. Serverless functions are also an option and can replace containers. In contrast, cloud-native applications present significant challenges in infrastructure and application security.
Self-healing
In a Cloud Native environment, the platform will perform remedial actions based on errors that it has detected. For instance, the platform will redeploy the app to another physical node if a problem is seen during the application deployment process. Such self-healing mechanisms are already widely used. However, they are limited in terms of the level of automation they can provide. Furthermore, considering the complexity of IT ecosystems, you must tailor the level of self-healing to the risk tolerance of the platform.
In this paper, we propose an infrastructure for self-healing cross-cloud application deployments that reduces the number of time applications is in a state of instability. This infrastructure is built on top of the recently proposed infrastructure for trans-cloud applications, which can run multi-component applications across various cloud providers and service levels. Furthermore, the proposed infrastructure leverages the TOSCA standard, which specifies the deployment and operation of individual components and their dependencies.
Cost-effectiveness
Customers’ patience with technical problems is at an all-time low in today’s digital world. Downtime can even be detrimental to the survival of a company. Cloud-native computing can address this problem, allowing organizations to redirect savings toward new features and improving performance. You can measure the cost-effectiveness of cloud-native computing in terms of its impact on IT budgets. Those savings can directly or indirectly relate to reduced downtime and improved resilience.
Many Cloud-native architecture patterns are based on loosely coupled microservices. These services reduce security and operational risk. Moreover, containerization tools have increased application modularity and extensibility. Google, for example, runs everything in containers. The company launches over 2 billion containers every week, an average of 200,000 containers per minute. A good tool can automatically manage storage, backups, security, and compliance and apply those changes in real-time.
Flexibility
The value of Cloud Native’s flexibility is greatly influenced by the absorptive capacity of internal organizations and the flexible architecture of cloud providers. The flexibility of Cloud Native architecture also facilitates the integration of resources from third-party cloud providers. In addition, this flexibility enables mutual contact and cooperation between all parties involved in the supply chain. The importance of supply chain agility is also reflected in the ability to cope with complexities, which enables Cloud Native to meet the requirements of both cloud consumers and providers.
In this study, the flexibility of the Cloud Native architecture significantly affects the value of cloud providers. This effect remains significant even after controlling for factors like supply chain agility and absorptive capacity. However, these two factors partially mediate the relationship between Cloud Native’s flexibility and value. Additional research is necessary to find other mechanisms affecting this relationship. In the meantime, this study provides a solid foundation for analyzing the value of Cloud Native.
