Cloud-Native Architecture – What is it & What makes it important?

Cloud computing has become one of the most essential parts of day-to-day operations in any organization in the IT sector, be it small or big. With new innovations emerging every day, companies are pushed to keep evolving their cloud-native architecture to accommodate the new updates. For any company, be it a cloud service provider or a company that uses the cloud server, cloud-native architecture plays a vital role in the proper functioning of the cloud server and services. So what is cloud-native architecture and why is it important?

Let’s start with understanding what cloud-native architecture is.

Cloud-Native Architecture

Cloud-native architecture is defined as the system or architecture of any software that has been developed or built to run specifically in the cloud.

“Cloud-native is an approach to building and running applications that fully exploit the advantages of the cloud computing model.” – Pivotal, Software Company

Cloud-native architecture utilizes the cloud philosophy of distributed cloud computing systems. As it is deployed in the cloud, it’s not built on any physical server. It might be deployed through multiple cloud implementations, i.e, some parts of the system may be on one service provider’s server and some on another vendor’s server.

Cloud-native architecture uses every feature of the cloud. Thus, it takes advantage of best-emerging technologies, distributed, scalable, flexible nature of the public cloud, maximising the focus of the organisation in creating business and keeping the clients happy.

By going cloud-native, a company removes many layers of infrastructure like network servers, operating systems etc. All these infrastructures can be turned into codes within a fraction of time by running a quick script.
Therefore, cloud-native architecture, in short, is an approach of delivering applications and software that are built, deployed, and operates in the cloud.

As stated earlier, cloud-native architecture utilizes all the advantages of the distributed, scalable, flexible nature of the cloud that gives it an edge over other technologies.

Let’s take a look at why cloud-native architecture is important?

Importance of Cloud-Native Architecture

Here are a few key characteristics of cloud-native architecture that makes it important for cloud companies.

1. Best Language & Frameworks: Cloud-native architecture uses languages and frameworks that suit the functionality and are compatible with the cloud servers while developing applications. That makes cloud-native applications polyglot i.e., they use a variety of languages, frameworks and runtimes, which ensure their rapid scalability and easy access.
2. Free from the server and operating system dependencies: Cloud-native architecture develops and deploys an application in the cloud in such a way that it doesn’t have an inclination for any particular operating system or individual machine. It functions at a higher level of abstraction.
3. Automated capacities: Applications developed using cloud-native architecture are highly automated, as they are deployed on a virtual server and elastic infrastructure. They can align themselves with existing infrastructure or any new infrastructure update, and could dynamically grow or shrink their size to fit in the server environment, adjusting to the load variation.
4. Smart resource allocation: Cloud-native architecture builds the applications in alignment with the governance model that is defined through a set of policies. Storage policies such as central processing unit (CPU) and storage quotas, and network policies that allocate resources to services, abide by all of them. Thus, the DevOps team and developers in an organization have their own allocated access, ownership and share of resources, without creating any confusion among themselves.
5. Financially feasibility: Last, but not least, cloud-native architecture is very feasible economically. As for cloud infrastructure you don’t have to buy anything upfront and completely. You need to pay only for what you use. That makes the first-time investment very low.

In the end, companies are opting for cloud-native architecture to thrive and stay ahead in the competition. Therefore, the need for cloud-native architects is increasing exponentially.

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