EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Cloud native applications empower organizations to make infrastructure development and management effortless. Achieving agility is what keeps the enterprise competitive in an ever-evolving market. With cloud native, organizations can move fast while dynamically maximizing real-time innovation, becoming more resilient and delivering without disruption.

By 2025, 95% of new digital workloads will likely be deployed on cloud-native platforms, as compared with just 30% in 2021. Take advantage of the power of cloud. See how your organization can harness the full potential of cloud native applications. Get fresh perspectives pertaining to the biggest business advantages.

Cloud native applications yield numerous benefits. These include cost efficiency, consumer friendliness, reduced vendor lock-in, automation, ease of troubleshooting, real-time analytics, compliance, visibility and enhanced security. Read on to learn more about cloud native benefits.

Review: What are cloud native applications?

Cloud native applications are tools or apps that scale easily, that scale quickly and that operate on the cloud. Cloud native applications rely on Platform-as-a-Service tools, agile methodology that can transform the software development process, and microservices, which serve as building blocks for cloud native architecture.

Some cloud native applications have digital doppelgangers. They can appear the same as non-cloud native apps. However, cloud native applications reflect a comprehensive shift to an entirely distinct group of practices, automated testing, design, customer-centric thinking, and accelerated production environments.

Because cloud native applications allow for shorter delivery cycles and higher quality products, getting used to cloud native requires a new approach within a development team; a transformation of sorts.

DevOps commonly uses the agile methodology in cloud native architecture. The application of agile DevOps practices across the software lifecycle enhance communication, efficiency of production and quality of products.

Elements of cloud native architecture

Before getting to cloud native benefits, let’s step back to review the elements of a cloud native architecture…

When compared with monolithic structures inherent in traditional applications, cloud native apps are clearly built on the principle of decentralization. Cloud native services interact as loosely connected microservices. They operate in containers managed by tools like Kubernetes.

To clear up confusion around the structure of cloud native applications, a simple explanation is as follows: Microservices function as the building blocks of a cloud native app. They move from one environment to another via containers. To manage the functions of different containers, developers leverage Kubernetes, which also enables developers to scale and deploy services.

17 cloud native benefits: How cloud native architecture can advance your organization

Organizations operationalize the benefits of cloud native architecture in diverse ways. Leveraging cloud native benefits sets an organization apart from competitors. When cloud native architecture is implemented correctly, it translates to successes that enable the organization in numerous capacities. Cloud native benefits include:

1. Cost efficiency. In the past, monolithic architecture restricted businesses to fixed resources with fixed costs. As a result, businesses incurred lengthier, more laborious and more costly maintenance and backup processes, which were considered supplementary services.

With cloud native applications, all solution are intended to function on the cloud. Compatibility with cloud native infrastructure lowers backup, maintenance, development and resource costs. The open source tools and systems that cloud native apps rely on manage to further reduce cloud native expenses.

2. Enhanced customer experiences. The components of traditional applications, such as software updates across long periods of time, dedicated teams for each task…etc., are no longer mandatory requirements for providing excellent customer service for this generation. So how does this translate for organizations that previously adopted monolithic architecture?

Moving to the cloud through application migration enables organizations to avoid losing decades of work and investment. Resources are simply transferred to a newer, more scalable, and more flexible platform. The shifting of cloud native applications assists organizations in pursuing a mobile-first approach to application development. This is pragmatic, as the majority of users consume information and applications over mobile devices. Broadly speaking, cloud native solutions place greater emphasis on the customer experience than ever before.

3. Adaptability and scalability. Cloud native applications can be reconfigured and adapted as needed. Consumer feedback can assist organizations in making decisions around application evolution. From the standpoint of industry, cloud native apps permit horizontal scalability as an organization grows, reducing the need for hardware solutions. Instead, organizations move forward with software dependent infrastructure.

4. Reduced vendor lock-in. Because cloud native applications involve decentralized services, selecting a cloud vendor that prioritizes security, performance and maintenance is critical. Nonetheless, vendors often approach organizations with pricing plans beyond the budget or with low quality services. If this occurred within a traditional application security environment, organizations would experience ‘vendor lock-in’.

However, cloud native skirts this issue by permitting the use of services from multiple cloud providers. Because all are able to work on the cloud native platform, organizations can switch to better pricing that comes with a better package of benefits at any time.

5. Automation and flexibility. Agile methodology adoption combined with DevOps can lead to higher levels of automation across the software development cycle. Via collaboration and CI/CD processes, the testing, release and feedback acquisition remains as a continuous loop of product advancement and increased customer satisfaction. By enabling organizations to work across multiple cloud platforms, cloud native applications remove the restrictions introduced by traditional architecture. With cloud native applications, organizations get unprecedented flexibility across the public, private or hybrid cloud. No additional changes or requirements.

6. Reusability and serverless platforms. Cloud native applications rely on serverless platforms to upload portions of code, which perform specific functions when isolated and deployed. In turn, this helps the organization recycle parts of project code while developing new projects. Because each part of cloud native services function with their own logic, development teams save time and financial resources.

7. Troubleshooting. Cloud native applications retain inherent fault tolerant mechanisms on account of microservices. Any troubleshooting post deployment is much easier in cloud native infrastructure than in traditional infrastructure because the entire app can be segmented into microservices. Each microservice acts as a service function. After tracking an issue, service is isolated and issues are resolved at origin points. No server downtime needed.

In the event of a breach, cloud native app use means that an organization has a greater chance of efficiently handling the aftermath within a certain container. The rest of the app remains unaffected. The key component behind this type of threat management is the container orchestrator. In addition, when some areas of infrastructure collapse or if a particular data center experiences a problem, the portability of cloud native software allows developers to shift components to alternative environments as needed.

8. Designed for the era of 5G. According to experts, the fastest 5G networks are poised to be at least 10X faster than 4G LTE. The 5G era demands fast, frictionless technologies and tech experiences. Organizations can meet consumer expectations in this regard by adopting cloud native applications.

9. Real-time analytics and compliance with guidelines. Cloud native applications are designed to accommodate data influx. They make it possible to measure, manipulate, analyze and utilize data in real-time. In turn, this assists organizations in detecting performance issues, troubleshooting, assessing customer behavior…etc. With cloud native applications, data can be assigned a ‘lifespan’ and discarded or reorganized in a storage medium.

10. Compliance. The majority of cloud native applications comply with HIPAA, GDPR and other blanket regulations.

11. Faster release pace. In the modern marketplace, time-to-market can function as a key differentiator between cutting-edge organizations and industry laggards. How quickly can your organization build, iterate and ship to customers? The faster that organizations can move through this process, the more likely they are to succeed in today’s evolving market landscape.

Modern DevOps includes automation throughout the software delivery process. Whether in relation to build automation, test automation or deployment automation, the software delivery pipeline has undergone a transformation that renders it faster and more predictable than ever before.

The modern cloud native application supports DevOps processes, enabling a degree of automation and collaboration not feasible when local development and limited server-based software delivery processes were the norm.

Further, in terms of maintenance and post-release bug remediation, cloud architectures typically have shorter de-bugging times.

12. Auto-provisioning. Did someone say provisioning? Cloud native applications support auto-provisioning. This means that they will automatically move towards self-service and programmatic provisioning when resources are needed. As a result, applications can run smoothly without requiring any manual intervention. The cloud native application platform offers a new runtime environment that allows applications to operate securely, efficiently and at-scale.

13. Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). The cloud native model employs a CI/CD deployment methodology. This is known for its capacity to improve the delivery of code changes, enabling changes to be made more often. Further, CI/CD streamlines application deployment to selected infrastructures in a dependable and consistent manner while simultaneously automating the testing and security compliance. In essence, CI/CD allows DevOps teams to deliver applications efficiently without affecting operational capacity.

14. Ease-of-management. For IT teams, cloud native applications are nearly effortless to manage. Platforms like Azure enable teams to upload code in the form of functions. The platform runs the functions for employees.

As alluded to earlier, cloud native applications can be automated. They mesh well with the idea of infrastructure as code. In fact, a certain level of automation is really required to simply manage these complex applications.

15. Portability. Cloud native applications are vendor neutral. They rely on containers to port microservices between vendor infrastructure. This reduces vendor lock-in.

16. Visibility. Since microservice architecture isolates services, it makes it easier for engineering teams to study applications and determine how they function together.

17. Increased security. Because cloud native applications are built from smaller services, which are each secured separately, the data is actually more secure than ever before. Although mentioned last in this list, increased security is among the major cloud native benefits.

Further thoughts

Cloud native benefits organizations in a myriad of ways. Cloud native applications are powerful, capable and advantageous, which explains why 75% of companies are focusing on the development of cloud native applications. As cloud native applications continue to see deployment, organizations will also need to zero in on advanced observability and security capabilities.

Survey results indicate that nearly 70% of companies using cloud native applications perceive workload-based IDS/IPS, DPI, DDoS and WAF as the top network security capabilities needed at this time. These capabilities are followed by workload access controls (59%) and micro segmentation (43%).

Modern cloud security offerings are backed by the best security vendors in existence. If your organization needs unified cloud native security, learn more here. For further information about cloud native benefits and security, see CyberTalk.org’s past coverage.