Cloud Native Tools & Platforms: Weapons of Strategic Transformation?

According to Gartner, by 2025 cloud native platforms will underpin over 90% of all new digital initiatives. That’s up from 40% in 2021. The reason? Cloud native tools and platforms are all about speed and agility; they allow companies to create responsive, innovative systems, and get new ideas to market quickly and seamlessly.

Microsoft talks about cloud-native tools as being:

“weapons of strategic transformation that accelerate business velocity and growth.”

Given this accolade, maybe it’s time to get a better perspective on what it is about cloud native apps and platforms that’s causing so much disruption.

What are cloud native tools and platforms?

“Cloud-enabled” applications and platforms are created to run in on-premise data centres, then they’re modified to run in the cloud. “Cloud-native” apps and platforms are designed differently. They’re built entirely on virtual hardware, and are embedded in its architecture.

The fact that cloud-native apps are designed and constructed in the cloud means they can take full advantage of the cloud computing model. This makes them more flexible and resilient than other traditional apps.

How are cloud native applications built?

Software teams use microservices and other technological blocks to build and run cloud native platforms and tools including microservices, APIs, containers and service meshes.

Microservices are small interdependent software components that work independently, each focusing on a specific problem. They’re loosely coupled together so that they can collectively perform as a complete cloud-native software.

Developers can make changes to an application or platform by working on its microservices, one at a time. This means the app can continue to run even if one microservice fails. Microservices can be set up, deployed or duplicated in an instant, offering a flexibility that’s not possible with traditional apps.

Benefits of cloud native tools and platforms

• Businesses can develop solutions more rapidly and more efficiently than before. Developers can build tools and platforms that are capable of keeping up with rapidly changing market demands.
• Cloud native apps are highly scalable and easy to modify. They can connect easily to most existing cloud services and extend that service’s capabilities with minimal need for coding.
• Backup and recovery is generally automatic compared to traditional applications that have manual backup. This adds an extra layer of reliability.
• Cloud native apps provide a consistent user experience whether they’re deployed on a public, private or hybrid cloud.
• Cloud native apps can be developed and updated quickly and at a lower risk than via previous methods. Traditional applications require a lot of time to build as they’re developed in a multi-step process. Cloud native apps however, are built by transferring code directly into production.
• Cloud native tools use software-defined infrastructure, eliminating the need for hardware, so they can scale without requiring expensive servers, processors, storage, or memory. This kind of horizontal scalability is behind the massive potential of cloud platforms like Facebook and Amazon AWS.
  
  

Examples of cloud-native applications

Amazon AWS

Amazon’s cloud native services allow companies to design, build and manage applications in the cloud. By following AWS’s Well-Architected Framework software engineers are able to achieve the best performance for cloud native workloads.

Microsoft Azure

Azure provides the technologies to allow companies to build, create and manage applications across multiple clouds.

Netflix

Netflix built its own data centres in 2016 then decided to go cloud-native and shifted to microservices. This meant their developers could deliver features in far faster timescales than previously.

Airbnb

Arbnb can scale its marketplace indefinitely thanks to its decision to migrate to a cloud native Kubernetes environment in 2017.

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