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Companies are faced with stiff competition and must move to a platform that drastically reduces the turnaround time for designing applications. It will help them move to the market faster and leverage the first move advantage. Such requirements make businesses choose cloud native application deployment.
More businesses are opting for the cloud native framework as they can effectively leverage the benefits of a cloud environment. You can readily optimize them for better performance, and the applications can quickly scale as the business grows. They can be designed as loosely coupled systems and readily optimized to achieve better speed. We will discuss more on the cloud native platform and its architecture.
What are Cloud Native Applications?
We must first understand what cloud native is. With cloud technologies being in vogue, the cloud native approach is about designing and running programs that consider several benefits of the cloud computing model. The programs can be run on private, public, or hybrid cloud and feature loosely coupled, easily managed, and resilient.
Businesses use this methodology as the time to market the applications is lesser, and they can adhere to customer demands faster. They can use microservices and other features and effectively allocate resources to the services used by the application. The program becomes flexible and can quickly adapt to the cloud architecture.
The cloud native architecture has an inherent ability to provide access to modern applications and data services for developers. It can involve modern technologies that reduce operational tasks and take less time to design programs. It provides developers with a standards-based platform to build and manage applications.
Few Principles of Cloud Native Application Architecture
The design is like loosely coupled microservices, and the applications are developed as a collection of small services. They can communicate and run some processes on their own. The services can utilize several different runtimes, languages, and frameworks. The architecture can add commodity server nodes to the cluster and scale the application.
The services use lighter APIs based on protocols like REST. The services can communicate internally using Protobuff, Thrift, etc. Any instance can process the requests, which allows them to be run in a distributed way and maintain their state. Apart from being resilient, the applications are packaged as light containers and can isolate the applications into small execution environments.
The applications can leverage the elasticity of the cloud environment and can use more resources when there is a sudden increase in demand. A cloud native application can scale based on the requirements. CI/ CD allows development teams to provide code changes reliably. CI provides a consistent way to package and test the programs, while CD can automate the application delivery to the selected infrastructure.
How you can Build Cloud-Native Application Development
The development and operation teams must regularly collaborate with a shared purpose and feedback through DevOps. Cloud native application development mainly focuses on loose coupling, independence of the services, and architecture modularity. Adopting containers provides the optimal application development unit and a self-contained execution environment. Developers can use DevOps and containers to update applications as a collection of microservices.
The microservices run their processes, communicate using APIs, and manage them through a service mesh layer. Several businesses can optimize the applications using a service-based architecture. DevOps workflows like CI/ CD and standard development environments can form an integral part of the application.
Benefits of Cloud Native Applications
Cloud native applications can leverage the benefits of the efficiency and speed of the cloud. There are several benefits of using cloud native applications.
Provides more flexibility
The cloud native applications allow flexible deployment options and are easy to deploy and develop. Businesses can also receive impressive services at a reasonable price. They can build applications which can run on any private or public cloud. The applications can optimize the business operations and makes it easier to achieve its goals strategically.
A scalable option
The microservices can be isolated logically, which means that if one is changed to scale, the others are not affected. They can survive and remain online even if there is an outage across the network. Moreover, if you must update some components faster than others, the architecture can readily adapt.
It gives a competitive advantage
Using the cloud can help businesses grow faster. The focus moves from cost reduction to strategically devising means to meet business objectives and stay ahead of peers. Companies can quickly develop applications and respond faster to audience needs. You can also deploy application upgrades with almost zero downtime.
Align your business
Businesses find it necessary to align their workflows to address their priorities readily. It can remove the risk of human errors as they focus more on automating underlying processes. There are automatic patch upgrades across all levels of the technical stack. It reduces the downtime and the need for expert resources to handle the upgrades.
Few Best Practices for Cloud Native App Development
Being technology agnostic can help
The application must be able to run on different infrastructures and need not require too many changes. By containerizing the applications, they can be efficiently run on different infrastructures. When you have decided to orchestrate the containers using the Kubernetes platform, you can deploy the cluster on AWS or GCP.
The number of computing devices increases and demands become more complex. It is necessary that the applications are future-ready and can handle business growth. The microservices are technology agnostic and help improve the autonomy and productivity of the team members.
Address speed and scalability of the business
The core value of several implementations that utilize cloud native applications is to ensure development quickly. Being serverless is a computing option where you need not manage servers to scale the application. It provides an efficient resource option and ensures faster project delivery.
A cloud native application can adopt new features without several changes. You can adopt various self-service platforms which can allow teams to allow project teams to deliver software consistently. You must ensure automation of the deployment of multiple environments. The system must also be resilient and responsive even when it stares at failure.
Empowering project teams
The project teams must be the owners of the entire project lifecycle. When you are creative, it will motivate you and allow you to take more risks. You can leverage microservices and allocate resources to each service when it needs. Each service will have a specific goal and communicate with others through APIs.
It is essential to use the right frameworks and applications and take advantage of the benefits of using the cloud environment. It can minimize deployment risks and increase the flexibility and speed of the application. The team must also use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to provide resources over a safe infrastructure.
HCL Cloud Native Platform is Suitable for your Business
The HCL software cloud strategy helps companies use a technology platform that utilizes cloud native technologies. The Cloud Native Application workflows help companies meet their objectives and provide the freedom to innovate and scale. It provides access to REST API endpoints and various other applications.
You can migrate across different platforms and deploy a multi-cloud strategy that can help run on any cloud. The software is platform-agnostic, and you can install them on public, private, or hybrid cloud.
Conclusion
The business environment changes fast, and with technological advancements, businesses are coping with the changes better than before. They must be agile enough to respond to customer needs and stay ahead of the competition. The cloud native application architecture provides the leeway to minimize the project timelines and go to market faster than before.
HCL allows you to migrate to a cloud native platform fast, and you can manage the HCL products on a cloud platform of your choice. It can help you design and run scalable applications and allow loosely coupled systems to be resilient and observable. You also have the freedom to scale and the power to innovate, enabling you to adapt to change faster.
Are you trying to move to a cloud native platform? Be in touch with our consultants for further details.
Also Read, 5 Phases of Project Management