6 Benefits Of Adopting Cloud Native Development Approaches

Cloud-native application development integrates both organizational and technical shifts in software design, construction, and deployment within cloud environments, expediting value delivery and enhancing overall business efficacy. Amidst the dynamic tech landscape, embracing cloud-native development methodologies presents substantial advantages for businesses striving to bolster agility and productivity. In this blog post, ‘6 Benefits of Adopting Cloud Native Development Approaches,’ we delve into the essence of cloud-native development, its pivotal components, and the diverse array of benefits it offers.

This article is sponsored by Savvycom, a well-known software development company that offers cloud service solutions trusted by major brands in healthcare, education, finance, retail, and more.

What Is Cloud Native?

Cloud-Native is a term referring to an approach for building and running applications across various types of clouds. It involves designing applications explicitly for cloud development and management, enabling companies to accelerate application delivery, enhance agility, and meet customer demands for speed and performance. This approach allows for simplified initial design and functionality, facilitating faster launch with subsequent iterative improvement—emphasizing interactive development.

What Are The Key Components Of Cloud Native Development?

Cloud-native development, unlike conventional ones that can function in the cloud, are custom-made for cloud settings. They’re purposefully developed to operate effortlessly in public, private, or hybrid clouds from the outset, instead of being adapted for traditional on-premises data centers.

Microservices Architecture

Microservices architecture is fundamental to cloud-native development. It entails breaking down applications into smaller, self-contained services. Each service is independently developed, deployed, and scaled, promoting agility and quick iteration. This setup enables teams to concentrate on specific functionalities, simplifying updates and improving service reliability within the cloud environment.

Containerization

Containerization plays a pivotal role in cloud-native development by encapsulating applications and their dependencies within portable containers. These containers guarantee consistent environments from development to production, leading to smoother deployments and optimized resource utilization. By isolating applications, containerization enhances scalability and simplifies the management of microservices, making it indispensable for agile cloud operations.

Utilization of Open-Source Software

Cloud-native development relies heavily on open-source software, such as Docker and Kubernetes, to boost agility and reduce vendor lock-in. These tools, crucial for deploying and managing containerized microservices, benefit from community-driven innovation and support. For example, companies like Netflix and Adobe utilize Kubernetes to efficiently orchestrate their cloud environments, showcasing the robust capabilities and scalability of open-source frameworks in practical settings. This approach not only accelerates development but also drives continuous technological progress.

Application Delivery Control

Application delivery control involves critical practices like continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD), and automated testing. These practices are pivotal for ensuring swift and dependable software updates. 

By diminishing time-to-market and elevating overall quality, organizations can adeptly navigate today’s dynamic business environment. Moreover, cloud-native technologies integrate security features within applications, such as traffic routing and load balancing among microservices. Consequently, numerous forward-thinking organizations are shifting from traditional application delivery controllers to harness the benefits of cloud-based solutions.

6 Benefits Of Adopting Cloud Native Development Approaches

Understanding the numerous advantages of embracing a cloud-native approach can guide you in staying focused and making informed decisions about what truly matters as you progress.

Swift Allocation of Resources

Cloud-native development empowers organizations to quickly allocate resources, optimizing computing power, storage, and networking capabilities as required. In contrast to traditional methods, which may take weeks, cloud-native environments provide near-instantaneous self-service provisioning. Developers can effortlessly create new environments, whether they’re websites, virtual machines, or databases. This agility promotes efficiency, scalability, and adaptability, enabling businesses to promptly respond to evolving demands.

Economies through Cost Reduction

Embracing cloud-native development yields significant cost reductions for organizations. By leveraging cloud resources and pay-as-you-go pricing models, they circumvent the substantial upfront investments typically tied to hardware procurement. 

This transition not only slashes infrastructure expenses but also streamlines operational overhead through automated provisioning and management tasks. 

Enhanced Availability and Resilience

Cloud-native development enables businesses to swiftly allocate resources, optimizing the utilization of computing power, storage, and networking capabilities precisely when required.

Unlike traditional approaches, cloud-based resources are provisioned almost instantly through self-service, in stark contrast to the weeks-long process of conventional methods. This empowers developers to quickly set up new environments, encompassing websites, virtual machines, and databases.

The rapid allocation of resources enhances business agility and adaptability, crucial for staying responsive to evolving market demands and customer needs.

Automated Scalability of Applications

Applications are empowered to automatically scale based on demand, eliminating the need for manual intervention to handle fluctuating workloads. This automated scaling enhances performance and user experience significantly.

In contrast to local development with limited scalability constrained by on-premise data center capacity, cloud-based scaling is automated and virtually limitless. This proves to be a game-changer for applications experiencing unpredictable traffic surges, especially for businesses.

Accessibility from Anywhere

Remote work has become the standard practice, and building software in the cloud facilitates access to the development environment from any location. Savvycom enhances this accessibility by providing a cloud direct connection, guaranteeing optimal performance and security.

This seamless accessibility enables teams to collaborate effectively across different geographic locations while ensuring consistent access to essential applications and data. Whether working remotely from home, a coffee shop, or an international office, cloud-native development bridges geographical gaps and fosters productivity from any location.

Accelerated Time-to-Market

Cloud-native development revolutionizes organizational efficiency by slashing time-to-market for products and services. This accelerated pace facilitates rapid innovation cycles, ensuring timely delivery in response to customer needs and market dynamics.

By shedding traditional infrastructure management constraints, cloud-native development enables agile processes. Leveraging methodologies such as DevOps, containers, automation, and CI/CD, it optimizes development and testing workflows. Consequently, time-to-market is expedited, providing a pivotal competitive advantage for your organization.

Highlighted in an IBM report, 73% of surveyed organizations attribute the swift development and rollout to cloud-native approaches.

The Top Trend in Cloud Native Applications

Today, cloud utilization is crucial for all companies as they pursue digital transformation. Below are the top three trends in cloud-native technology that help shape this profitable opportunity.

These trends signify a shift toward more flexible, scalable, and collaborative business models, harnessing cloud computing to meet the evolving needs of the digital landscape.

Digital Platforms and Ecosystems

Digital platforms and ecosystems are changing how businesses operate by connecting various independent agents to create value together. They involve platform ownership, ways to create value, and the autonomy of partners. The key benefit of this trend is its ability to foster a community of supply and demand, facilitating quick innovation and growth. For example, SAP’s ecosystem with over 13,000 partners shows how digital platforms can surpass customer expectations through collaboration.

Cloud Spending

Cloud spending is expected to rise significantly, with global spending on public cloud services projected to hit nearly $600 billion in 2023. This increase is fueled by the adoption of new technologies like generative AI, which demand scalable computing resources provided by cloud platforms. The value of this trend is clear in how the cloud drives digital transformation, enabling organizations to adapt and innovate swiftly.

Hyper-agile Applications

Hyper-agile applications are software development practices that allow teams to adapt rapidly to changing needs in fast-paced environments. By 2023, most enterprise apps will adopt hyper-agile architectures, with 80% of development on cloud platforms (PaaS) using microservices and cloud functions, and over 95% of new microservices deployed in containers.

Summary

In summary, adopting cloud native development approaches offers numerous benefits, including swift resource allocation, cost reduction, enhanced availability and resilience, automated scalability of applications, accessibility from anywhere, and accelerated time-to-market. 

Understanding the key components of cloud-native development, such as microservices architecture, containerization, open-source software utilization, and application delivery control, is crucial for organizations looking to harness the full potential of cloud computing for their application development and deployment strategies.