What are the best practices and tools for cloud native application development and deployment?

1 Cloud Native Principles

Cloud native applications are distinct from traditional or legacy applications due to their adherence to core principles. These include microservices - independent services that communicate through APIs for faster and easier development, testing and deployment - and containers, which package the application code and dependencies and are portable across different environments. Cloud native applications also rely on orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes, to automate the management, scaling, and healing of the containers and services they run. Finally, cloud native applications embrace a DevOps culture, using tools such as CI/CD pipelines and monitoring to deliver software faster and more frequently.

2 Cloud Native Benefits

Cloud native applications offer several benefits for your organization, such as flexibility, scalability, resilience, and agility. The ability to run on any cloud platform or provider gives you more options and control over your IT resources and costs. Cloud native applications can scale up or down automatically, improving your responsiveness and efficiency. Furthermore, they can handle failures and errors gracefully, without affecting the whole system or the user experience, thereby enhancing your reliability and reputation. Finally, cloud native applications can be updated and deployed quickly and frequently, enabling you to deliver new features and value to your customers and stakeholders faster.

3 Cloud Native Challenges

Cloud native applications come with some challenges that need to be addressed, such as complexity, security, and governance. Complexity is heightened due to multiple components, services, and tools that need to be coordinated and integrated. Security requires more attention and investment in policies, practices, and tools, such as encryption and authentication. Governance requires more oversight when dealing with multiple teams, platforms, and providers to ensure compliance and quality.

4 Cloud Native Procurement

When selecting and evaluating cloud native services and solutions, there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. Compatibility is key, as you must make sure that the services and solutions are compatible with your existing or desired cloud platform, provider, application architecture, and design. Additionally, you should assess the functionality and features of the services and solutions to ensure that they meet your business and technical requirements. Performance is also important, as you must measure the performance and availability of the services and solutions to understand their impact on your application speed, scalability, and resilience. Lastly, you should compare the cost and value of the services and solutions to see if they fit your budget and ROI expectations.

5 Cloud Native Tools

Cloud native applications rely on a variety of tools to support their development and deployment, such as Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Istio, and Prometheus. Docker is a platform that simplifies the packaging and distribution of application code and dependencies. Kubernetes enables you to orchestrate and manage containers and services. Helm manages the configuration and deployment of Kubernetes applications with reusable templates called charts. Istio controls the network communication between microservices with features like load balancing and policy enforcement. Prometheus allows you to monitor and collect metrics from your cloud native applications, providing features such as alerting, querying, and visualization.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?