Cloud-Native- A Solution for Organizations

Cloud-Native- A Solution for Organizations

Introduction: Cloud Native

It is only recently that the term cloud-native has come into wide spread use. And before we go deep into this, let us understand what is it, and what are its attributes? Cloud-native is a way in which the developers build and run applications while taking full advantage of the benefits of the cloud computing delivery model and container orchestration. Cloud-native applications are developed to run in the cloud, taking the focus away from machines and onto the actual services. As microservices are used during the architecture of the cloud-native applications in place of monolithic application structure, they depend on the containers for the packaging of the application’s libraries and processes for placement. These microservices permit the developers to make peaceable apps that are made as individual modules focused on executing single services. The container orchestration tools help the makers of the applications to synchronize how an application’s containers will function, along with the scaling and deployment. While talking about the development of the cloud-native app, we need to shift to a DevOps operating structure. And this shift leads to the working of development and operations teams together, for a faster and smoother production process. Now below are some of the attributes of cloud-native applications:

1. Cloud-native applications are packaged as lightweight containers.
2. They are built with best-of-breed languages and frameworks.
3. They are structured as loosely coupled microservices.
4. The cloud-native apps are centered on APIs for interaction and collaboration.
5. They are deployed on self-service, elastic, and cloud infrastructure.

Now that we know what cloud-native is and what its attributes are. let's move on to the principles of cloud-native architecture:

Principle-1: Build for automation

While working on the development of software systems, automation, it turns out, is always the best option. And the cloud has made it easier than ever to automate the architecture along with the components that are to be placed above it. Although the upfront investment is most often higher, an automated solution will always pay off in the end. It also turns out to be the best in terms of resilience and performance of the system. The automated processes help in repairing, scaling, and deploying your system quicker than on that relies on human effort. One can automate the below-mentioned areas in cloud-native systems:

1. Infrastructure
2. Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery
3. Scale-up and scale-down of the system
4. Monitoring and Recovery

Principle-2: Be careful with state

Be it the user data or the system state, the storing of the state is the toughest part of the cloud- native architecture. So, while you are developing your system, you should try to be intentional about when and how to store state, and design components to be stateless wherever needed. Stateless components are easy to:

1. Scale: To scale up, all you need to do is to add more copies. While to scale down, train instances to dismiss once they are done with their current work.
2. Repair: When you want to repair a failed instance of a component, just dismiss it as smoothly as possible and call for a replacement.
3. Roll-back: In case you come across a bad deployment, stateless components can easily be rolled back, as you can dismiss them and plan to launch instances of the old version.
4. Load-Balance across: If the components are stateless in the system, load balancing is much easier, as any instance can manage any request. Load balancing in stateful components is tough.

Principle-3: Go for managed services

Most of the providers of the cloud, offer the users a perfect set of managed services, providing every kind of function to help ease the pain in handling backend software or architecture. Still, most of the companies prefer to be careful while taking advantage of these services because they are worried about being locked into a given provider. Though the concern is valid, managed services can frequently save the firms immensely in time and operational overhead.

Principle-4: Practice defense

Traditional architectures place the bulk of their trust in perimeter security. Unfortunately, this method is vulnerable to insider attacks as well as external threats. Adding to this, the growing pressure to provide flexible, mobile applications has furthermore undermined the network perimeter. Cloud-native architecture is quite prone to external attacks and as a result, prefers an approach of defense-in-depth by applying authentication between each component thereby reducing the trust between those components. As a result, there is no inside and outside, or in a sense, any perimeter to protect. The architecture can also add rate limiting and script injection for defense.

Principle-5: Keep architecting

One prominent characteristic of a cloud-native system is that it keeps evolving, and that is similarly true of its architecture. As a cloud-native architect, you should constantly try to refine, simplify and improve the architecture of the system in accordance with the continuous changes in the demands of the organization, the changes in the landscape of your IT systems, and the changes in the abilities of your cloud provider itself. The dead, ossifying IT systems will eventually bring the organization to a standstill making them unable to deal with the new threats and opportunities. Now that we have covered the principles of cloud-native architecture let us talk briefly about its effect on our ecosystem. In the last few years, the technology around us has changed drastically. And, in the last 5 years, the technology of cloud-native computing has also evolved a lot. As a result of this, the way in which the software is developed has also changed. It has mainly affected the speed of the team’s delivery, which has turned out to be beneficial for organizations and their customers. The cloud-native allows companies to be competitive in big markets. It has become the reason for the success of many tech powerhouses and digital-native companies like cab services providers, as an example. While well-developed cloud natives are best suited for the big organizations, small enterprises are now replicating cloud-native frameworks in order to compete in the market place.

Conclusion

If you are having a problem with adding new code to your software and facing issues in meeting deadlines, then cloud-native is a solution for you. It is the best option when it comes to timely deliveries and adding new code to the system. It has been developed with a focus on customer-centricity, quality, and end-to-end visibility. It helps organizations in assessment, selection of the correct methodology, platforms, services, and new-generation architectural patterns. Though it might cost you a bit, it is highly beneficial for business growth and in helping teams to work more efficiently and quickly. Here are a few Pros and cons of cloud-native architecture you should know as well:

Pros:

1. It makes the process of compliance quicker, which is important for organizations.
2. It takes care of all the bugs and slow loading speed.
3. To assist a variant and growing customer base, cloud-native architecture has been allowing scalable development. It also helps in managing variable costs.
4. It is one of the most reliable technologies invented for organizations.
5. According to its services, it is very cost-efficient.

Cons:

Though there are various advantages of cloud-native, there are a few drawbacks of the cloud- native:

1. The cost you are paying for cloud-native might be high for some organizations.
2. Applications that are stored on a specific cloud platforms are not easy to transfer to other cloud platforms. It takes a lot of rewriting and refactoring of the code.
3. If the applications continue to run on the target cloud platform for a long time, the users will be limited getting back their investment in code changes and testing.

Reference

Books-

 

1. 1. Hands-On Cloud-Native Microservices with Jakarta EE

 

1. 1. Hands-On Microservices with Kotlin

 

1. JavaScript Cloud Native Development Cookbook

 

Links-

 

1. 1. Cloud-Native Architecture: What Is It and Why Is It So Important?

 

1. 1. Cloud-native architectures are reshaping the enterprise

 

1. 1. 5 principles for cloud-native architecture

 

1. What is Cloud Native?