A characteristic of digital transformation is an interest to move business applications to the cloud. To be clear, this cloudification is not simply making the applications run from the cloud, but actual perform as if they are cloud-native applications (i.e., they are purpose-built to run on the cloud platform).
More recently, following comments from consumers about the need to have the same experience across all devices – be it desktop, laptop, tablets, smartphones or smart devices – we’ve seen the rise in discussions around edge-native.
Gartner distinguished VP analyst, Thomas J. Bittman, cautioned against misconstruing cloud-native and edge-native as the same thing. In a previous article on FutureCIO he wrote:
“Cloud-native apps are designed to leverage effectively unlimited horizontal scaling, with rapid change and rapid deployment as key. Innovation (at scale) is also central. Edge-native, on the other hand, is focused on real-time and dynamic automation of physical systems (things and people),” clarified Bittman.
Read this for: A business case for cloud-native
To which, we ask should the interest on cloud-native focus exclusively on the applications?
Bittman’s ideas confirms what we understand as a complex set of undertakings for an enterprise to transform its infrastructure for cloud-native operation.
He goes on to list key differences between the edge-native versus cloud-native covering hardware, resilience, scalability, elasticity, data, orchestration, security, app model, networking and management.
FutureCIO approached Brad Gray, APAC senior vice president at Exclusive Networks for his take on becoming a cloud-native enterprise.
What is a cloud native enterprise?
Cloud-Native Enterprise are organizations with scalable applications that are developed and deployed in the modern dynamic cloud environments whether they sit on public, private or hybrid cloud. These apps are designed to scale using technologies such as container, microservices and APIs. They are deployed with services in containers, deployed as microservices and managed on elastic infrastructure through DevOps processes and continuous delivery workflows.
Why is it important to become cloud-native?
With the cloud capabilities of auto-scaling, auto-provision, and auto-redundancy capabilities, Cloud native can help organizations speed up innovation, improve agility and reduce IT costs. It can help move a business idea into production faster and with more agility than ever. Improvements to the applications can be done without disruption of the end user experience.
What needs to happen to be deemed a cloud native enterprise?
Leveraging the benefits of Cloud computation from the ground up rather than a lift-and-shift migration approach which is shifting the application from on-premise location to the cloud. With that, a cloud native enterprise can fully utilize either a single or multi-cloud service and capability.
What are the three most common areas where enterprises taking a cloud native initiative fail?
- Lift and shift Approach – Many organizations take existing workloads from on premise and migrate to the cloud. This will not maximise the full benefits of the essential cloud-native features and shifting the legacy practices to the cloud might not be optimized for the cloud.
- No visibility across the multi-cloud platforms – Many cloud users are deploying applications in two or more cloud providers. With multi-cloud strategies, organizations will need to know where their services are and what services are used across the multi-cloud platform.
- Too many microservices – Microservices are designed to be “responsible for a single feature” but designing microservices excessively will bring in more complexity. It will also bring a higher chance of communication failure and more and more security issues are likely to arise.
Can you list top things that an enterprise must do to transform into a cloud native enterprise?
- Business culture – Ensure the organization is aligned to work towards the same goal, Cloud Native. Ensure alignment from Development, Testing or Operations teams to have the same processes, workflows and to create applications with the cloud specifically in mind
- Monolith to microservices – Identifying a monolithic application and break down into microservices. This allows microservices to be shut off when not needed to save cost and for updates to be rolled out to that one microservice rather than the whole application.
- Automate Deployment – Using automation to eliminate manual tasks can accelerate application delivery. With cloud native features, processes and frameworks can be replaced by automation to reduce time delayed into market.
