How can you migrate to cloud native development?

1 Assess your current state

The first step in migrating to cloud native development is to assess your current state and identify your goals, challenges, and opportunities. You need to evaluate your existing applications, infrastructure, processes, and skills, and determine how well they align with the cloud native principles and practices. For example, you can use tools like the Cloud Native Maturity Matrix or the Cloud Native Application Architecture Assessment to measure your current level of cloud native maturity and readiness.

2 Choose your migration strategy

The next step is to choose your migration strategy based on your assessment results and your business objectives. There are different ways to migrate to cloud native development, such as rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, rebuilding, or replacing your applications. Each strategy has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the complexity, cost, and risk involved. You need to weigh the pros and cons of each option and select the one that best suits your needs and capabilities.

3 Adopt cloud native technologies

The third step is to adopt cloud native technologies that enable you to develop, deploy, and manage your applications in a cloud native way. These technologies include containers, microservices, orchestration platforms, service meshes, serverless functions, and observability tools. You need to learn how to use these technologies effectively and efficiently, and how to integrate them with your existing systems and tools. You also need to ensure that your cloud native technologies are secure, compliant, and reliable.

4 Implement cloud native practices

The fourth step is to implement cloud native practices that help you improve your agility, quality, and performance. These practices include continuous integration, continuous delivery, DevOps, DevSecOps, GitOps, and SRE. You need to adopt these practices across your entire development lifecycle, from planning and coding to testing and deploying. You also need to foster a culture of collaboration, feedback, and learning among your teams and stakeholders.

7 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?