Emphasising business mainstream, cloud-native is the talk of the town currently. The reality is that you either adopt it or remain in the black. A Business Wire report involving more than 300 IT decision-makers shows how cloud-native app adoption is the mainstream. About 86% of respondents confirm that their organisations actively use or have started using cloud-native apps today.
Cloud-native development hosts countless advantages, but these would depend on your strategy, following some valuable tips.
Meanwhile, moving from legacy apps to cloud-native apps can be quite challenging. It’s a pretty extended procedure that demands proper planning and patience. But when your organisation employs the significant tips outlined in this piece, it will mitigate setbacks and unsatisfied objectives.
What is a cloud-native Strategy?
When you go cloud-native, do not release the clutch too soon. Yes, being cloud-native does not automatically solve the problem; it only puts your organisation on the proper course towards the objective. You would also enjoy speed and simplifications void of complexities.
What is a cloud-native strategy? In simple terms, this strategy lets you realise a defined and refined business goal through cloud infrastructure, using tools such as orchestrators and containers.
You would require the following cloud-native development tips to help your business grow:
Set Reachable Goals
You want to set attainable goals to avoid getting stuck, especially while migrating to a cloud-native concept. First, you want to start small! It is most advisable to think about the services and dependencies before you transition to the cloud.
Also, you must be certain that the various application components can function in legacy and cloud technology.
Meanwhile, a low-risk application may be ideal for a start; they are not distributed highly, less user data usage, and do not require regular synchronization. A perfect example is caching application.
Be Confident
In most cases, confidence supersedes the level of hard work you put into the task. Without confidence, your dev team loses the mojo, and it is unacceptable in cloud-native since it deals vastly with innovations.
Although developers might find it difficult to cope, microservices can ensure working agility since it comprises modular and fine-grained components. Yes, microservices advocate agility in building, testing and production, which are scalable for flexible modifications.
A user can establish a variety of complex processes to reduce risk. For instance, when you connect various sign-off levels, the modification process and testing suggest that users make changes from various developers in batches. They are then tested and deployed instantly.
Careful with the App Choice
While deciding what application to select, note that there are unsuitable variants you would not want. For example, most proprietary hardware tech applications, like enterprise databases, are not commendable cloud-native principles.
You can’t conveniently move large databases, though. It is tough to virtualise them, and you must run them on underlying provider hardware.
Mainframe applications apps are also not very friendly apps. You would still find the financial services vertical. Moving these apps requires lots of commitment and hard work to transition it to cloud-native; not worth the effort.
Note that it’s neither beneficial nor viable to transition every app on cloud-native; some legacy apps should be left out. Most of the time, enterprises discover that after adopting cloud-native, some legacy apps give no value and are retired.
Don’t Do Perimeter Control
When you move into or already in the cloud-native sphere, do not rely on conventional security software. The software may be unable to address the scale, velocity and dynamic networking environment of containers in cloud-native. And when you add serverless functions, the issue worsens by abstracting infrastructure extensively to make microservices and apps execution environments.
Meanwhile, web attackers search for misconfigured cloud infrastructure permissions settings and lapses, loopholes, and exposures in serverless function code to access networks or services controlling your company’s sensitive data.
An organisation may employ CI/CD software to develop, test and deploy apps continually. If you use containers for native cloud app deployment, you can leverage the external and internal repository components and base images to boost the process. Nonetheless, container images from trustworthy repositories can feature loopholes that expose apps to cyberattacks.
As a solution, you may use guardrails in place of gates; guardrails assess and enforce security policies in the native cloud. In this regard, the security team can block non-compliant images from the CI/CD pipeline.
Final Thoughts
Migrating to cloud-native environments is a rough ride, a common attribute when embracing technology trends. Sometimes, you’d find your hard work to drop drastically, but it’s mostly due to poor planning and execution.
Would adopting cloud-native apps be easy? Sincerely, “No”, but it’s a worthy attempt. However, when you follow the essential tips outlined above, you should adapt to the system faster than expected.
In essence, start small and embrace low-risk applications until you master the process. When you’re confident of being a cloud-native expert, extend your horizons, pick more apps, but be careful not to pick the wrong apps.
