Cloud-native is a common household term regardless of its short debut period in the software industry. And to realise or manage a cloud to unleash its full potential, you want to operate by its principles.
Practising core cloud-native principles and architecture assists in faster application development. Moreover, you would be following an improved and shorter pathway towards production. The entire idea is realising scale, competitive advantage and speed.
What does cloud-native principles mean?
Cloud-native principles concentrate on discovering special cloud functionalities by taking an optimal route towards system architectures. Conventional architecture seems to optimise for a static, expensive infrastructure that demands some level of manual effort to change.
Therefore, conventional architecture concentrates on resilience and how a small and specific number of components perform. Typically, fixed infrastructure is less relevant because you’re billed per usage on the cloud. So, you get to save more money. Besides, automation is a crucial cloud-native attribute, making it convenient and comfortable to scale up and down.
In essence, native cloud architecture is concerned about resilience and scaling (horizontal scaling), failed component replacements through automation, and distributed processing.
Some Key cloud-native Principles that Businesses Should Think About
1. Remain an Architect
It is typical for cloud-native to evolve; it is a dynamic system, and its traditional attribute is changing. A cloud-native architect must plan methods to refine, simplify and enhance cloud-native architecture, following the business demands of the organisation. The scope of changes also extends to the changes in the abilities of your organisation’s cloud service provider and changes in the company’s IT system landscape.
Adopting a dynamic approach demands regular investment. However, it is important to move from traditional principles by encouraging growth, evolution, and responsiveness. Your organisation’s IT systems must not be static; the tech team must release changes.
Besides, static IT systems delay a company’s progress, making it difficult to adopt and adapt trends that ace competitors.
2. Select Appropriate Apps
Simplicity aside, some applications are more suitable in the native cloud than others. When your organisation launches some low-risk applications, it is imperative to point out and make specific applications a priority. Such apps would typically be of value in the company’s cloud-native systems.
Meanwhile, stateless apps benefit largely from cloud-native development. Stateless applications comprise some web-facing apps that you can access end-users at any time from the public internet. These applications typically get fast usage increase and decrease, and so, you must scale them rapidly.
3. Single Production Environment is Okay
A single application environment is necessary and relevant if you must employ cloud-native all-round. Some organisations prefer to build many environments ahead of production, including pre-prod, UAT, dev, test, etc., but these environments merely de-risk the process.
But if you must push changes and updates without altering production and limit it to your dev team, using multiple environments becomes slightly significant.
Somehow, the orgainsation’s pipeline becomes slower, and you’d find the systems stuck in queues and must deploy continuously.
You may bring in the canary releases and toggles functionalities to alter how you perceive the environment. Also, you can push code to production directly while achieving a similar goal and letting your devs only view it.
In essence, what matters is the behaviour of the software during production.
4. Structure Systems for Automation
When you automate, you’re taking advantage of a core cloud-native attribute. It is a noteworthy cloud-native practise software system, and the cloud simplifies infrastructure automation and the components above it.
Upfront investment may be expensive, which favours automated solutions that produce positive outcomes in the short run of effort. You can also expect resilience and optimal system performance.
Automation fixes, scales, and deploys systems faster than when done manually. Besides, cloud architecture is a dynamic concept. In this regard, when you discover new methods of setting up your system functionality, you also discover new things for automation.
5. Perform Test During Productions
Another important cloud-native principle is testing. cloud-native development requires having test during production critically. It might be interesting to note that testing during production in cloud-native development is more worthwhile than UAT. The reason is that despite your software being functional in UAT is worrisome since bugs may arise when production commences.
However, what works for you during production indicates that users will have the same experience. But you must be careful before making conclusions. Some techies fail to do enough testing since it tends to be a speed barrier that conflicts with the timeline and deadline.
Although testing decreases short-term lead times, you’d become confident during production. It eliminates the fear of not meeting deadlines and not releasing bugs to users. In essence, testing attracts speed and boosts confidence. The outcome may not be the best, but you can expect commendable results.
Conclusion
There is no magical aspect in cloud-native architecture that is fundamental in systems development. The principles are direct and straightforward; these are mere guidelines that let you unleash a complete cloud potential.
When you adopt and adapt cloud architectures, you realise new opportunities for possible enhancements you can employ and follow in many ways. You can redefine them ahead of the upcoming environmental shift.
Adopting new means may be challenging, but you must evolve to remain an authority in the competition. Of course, you do not have to be a giant; discover what works and dip a foot in the aspect you understand perfectly. Finally, keep in mind that native cloud development is the pathway towards flexibility and growth in business.