5 Key Motives to Adopt a Cloud-Native Approach

While some may argue that cloud-native history has been building for a while, it was companies like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Google, and Facebook that heralded the underrated act of simplifying IT environments for application development. The last decade saw a bunch of highly innovative, dynamic, ready to deliver, and scaled-at-speed applications take over businesses that were stuck in complex, monolithic environments, and failed to deliver equally compelling applications.

What dictated this change in track was the complexity and incompetence of traditional IT environments.

These companies had already proven their competitive edge with their knack in identifying and adapting futuristic technology, but this time, they went back and uncomplicated matters. They attested cloud-native to be “the” factor that simplified app development if we are to continue this trend of data overload. Their success was amplified by their ability to harness the elasticity of the cloud by redirecting app development into cloud-native environments.

Why Is Cloud-Native Gaining Importance?

Application development has rapidly evolved into a hyper-seamless, almost invisible change woven into the users’ minds. We are now in an era where releases are a non-event. Google, Facebook, and Amazon update their software every few minutes without downtimes – and that’s where the industry is headed. The need to deploy applications and subsequent changes without disrupting the user experience have propelled software makers into harnessing the optimal advantages of the cloud. By building applications directly in the cloud, through microservice architectures, organizations can rapidly innovate and achieve unprecedented business agility, which is otherwise unimaginable.

Key Drivers for Organizations to Going Native

1. Nurtures innovation

With cloud-native, developers have access to functionally rich platforms and infinite computing resources at the infrastructure level. Organizations can leverage off the shelf SaaS applications rather than developing apps from scratch. With less time spent on building from the ground up, developers can spend more time innovating and creating value with the time and resources at hand. Cloud platforms also allow the trial of new ideas at lower costs –through low-code environments and viable platforms that cut back costs of infrastructure setup.

2. Enhances agility and scalability

Monolithic application architectures make responding in real-time tedious; even the smallest tweaks in functionality necessitates re-test and deployment of the whole application. Organizations simply cannot afford to invest time in such a lengthy process. As microservice architectures are made of loosely tied independent elements, it is much easier to modify or append functionalities without disrupting the existing application. This process is much faster and is responsive to market demand. Additionally, microservice architectures are ideal for exploring fluctuations in user demands. Thanks to their simplicity, you only need to deploy additional capacity to cater to fluctuating demand (on an individual container), rather than the entire application. With the cloud, you can truly scale existing resources to meet real-time demand.

3. Minimizes time to market

Organizations are heavily involved in time-consuming processes in traditional infrastructure management- be it provisioning, configuring, or managing resources. The complex entanglement between IT and dev teams often adds to the delay in decision making, therefore obstructing real-time response to market needs. Going cloud-native allows most processes to be automated. Tedious and bureaucratic operations that took up to 5-6 weeks in a traditional setup can be limited to less than two weeks in cloud-native environments.

Automating on-premise applications can get complicated and time-consuming. Cloud-based app development overcomes this by providing developers with cloud-specific tools. Containers and microservice architectures play an essential part in making it faster for developers to write and release software sooner.

4. Fosters Cloud Economics

It is believed that most businesses spend a majority of their IT budget in simply keeping the lights on. In a scenario where a chunk of the data center capacity is idle at any given point in time, it demands the need for cost-effective methodologies. Automation centric features like scalability, elastic computing, and pay-per-use models allow organizations to move away from costly expenditures and redirect them towards new features development. In simple words, with a cloud-native approach, you bring the expenses down to exactly what you use.

5. Improves management and security

Managing cloud infrastructure can be handled with a cluster of options like API management tools, Container management tools, and cloud management tools. These tools lend holistic visibility to detect problems at the onset and optimize performance.

When talking of cloud, concerns related to compliance and security are not far off. The threat landscape of IT is constantly evolving. When moving to the cloud, businesses often evolve their IT security to meet new challenges. This includes having architectures that are robust enough to support change without risking prevailing operations. The loosely coupled microservices of cloud-native architectures can significantly reduce the operational and security risk of massive failures.

Adopting Cloud Native for Your Business

Migrating to cloud-native is a paradigm shift in the approach of designing, development, and deployment of technology. By reducing the complexity of integration, cloud-native provides a tremendous opportunity for enterprises. They can drive growth by leveraging cloud-native environments to develop innovative applications without elaborate setups. Organizations are looking at a lifelong means of creating continuously scalable products with frequent releases, coupled with reduced complexities and opex. Cloud and cloud-native technologies signify the building of resilient and efficient IT infrastructure minus the complications, for the future.

By selecting the right cloud-native solution provider, organizations can develop and deliver applications faster, without compromising on quality.

Conclusion

In an era of limitless choices, applications that quickly deliver on promises can provide a superior customer experience. Organizations can achieve this through faster product development, iterative quality testing, and continuous delivery. Cloud-native applications help organizations to be more responsive with the ability to reshape products and to test new ideas quickly, repetitively.