Embrace the new way to build Software
Cloud-native is an approach to building and running applications that exploits the advantages of the cloud computing delivery model. Cloud-native is about how applications are created and deployed, not where. While today public cloud impacts the thinking about infrastructure investment for virtually every industry, a cloud-like delivery model isn’t exclusive to public environments. It’s appropriate for both public and private clouds. Most important is the ability to offer nearly limitless computing power, on-demand, along with modern data and application services for developers. When companies build and operate applications in a cloud-native fashion, they bring new ideas to market faster and respond sooner to customer demands.
Organizations require a platform for building and operating cloud-native applications and services that automates and integrates the concepts of DevOps, continuous delivery, microservices, and containers:
DevOps
DevOps is the collaboration between software developers and IT operations with the goal of constantly delivering high-quality software that solves customer challenges. It has the potential to create a culture and an environment where building, testing and releasing software happens rapidly, frequently, and more
Microservices
Microservices is an architectural approach to developing an application as a collection of small services; each service implements business capabilities, runs in its own process and communicates via HTTP APIs or messaging. Each microservice can be deployed, upgraded, scaled, and restarted independent of other services in the application, typically as part of an automated system, enabling frequent updates to live applications without impacting end customers.
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery, enabled by Agile product development practices, is about shipping small batches of software to production constantly, through automation. Continuous delivery makes the act of releasing dull and reliable, so organizations can deliver frequently, at less risk, and get feedback faster from end users.
Containers
Containers offer both efficiency and speed compared with standard virtual machines (VMs). Using operating system (OS)-level virtualization, a single OS instance is dynamically divided among one or more isolated containers, each with a unique writable file system and resource quota. The low overhead of creating and destroying containers combined with the high packing density in a single VM makes containers an ideal compute vehicle for deploying individual microservices.
Why cloud-native applications matter
Cloud-native applications are purpose built for the cloud model. These applications—built and deployed in a rapid cadence by small, dedicated feature teams to a platform that offers easy scale-out and hardware decoupling—provide organizations with greater agility, resilience, and portability across cloud environments.
Cloud as competitive advantage.
Cloud-native means switching cloud goals from IT cost savings to the engine of business growth. In the age of software, businesses that can quickly build and deliver applications in response to customer needs will build enduring success.
Enable teams to focus on resilience.
When legacy infrastructure fails, services can suffer. In a cloud-native world, teams focus specifically on architecting for resilience. A cloud-native focus helps developers and architects design systems that stay online regardless of hiccups anywhere in the environment.
Gain greater flexibility.
Public cloud providers continue to offer impressive services at reasonable costs. But most enterprises aren’t ready to choose just one infrastructure. With a platform that supports a cloud-native approach, enterprises build applications that run on any (public or private) cloud without modification. Teams retain the ability to run apps and services where it makes the most business sense—without locking into one vendor’s cloud.
Align operations with the overall business.
By automating IT operations, enterprises can transform into a lean, focused team aligned with driving business priorities. They eliminate the risk of failure due to human error as staff focus on automated improvements to replace routine, mundane admin tasks. With automated live patching and upgrades at all levels of the stack, they eliminate downtime and the need for ops experts with ‘hand-me-down’ expertise.