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Five Advantages of a Cloud-Native Model for App Development

First Time-to-Market

Digital transformation isn’t just an option but an imperative for companies and businesses today. In order to achieve the much-needed flexibility, scale and speed in this ever-dynamic and fast-paced market, business owners are migrating to the cloud.

To fully leverage the cloud’s flexibility and scalability, a new application development form is required – the cloud-native approach.

Cloud-native application development primarily focuses on how software experts develop and deploy applications. An entirely cloud-native application offers an unfailing user experience, whether operating on a hybrid, private or public cloud.

Cloud-native application development prepares businesses for the present and the future. In this article, I’ll help you understand why you should consider cloud-native applications.

The speed at which businesses can deliver value to their customers is one of the main factors that make them either remain on top or not. Compared to server-based or local development, most cloud-native development services process and automate results in fast-tracked software delivery.

Reducing the time to roll out a software product provides a business with a competitive advantage, allowing it to embrace the latest trends in pursuit of a larger market slice.

Ease of Management

A cloud-native model allows for straightforward infrastructure management. Using platforms that don’t have servers doesn’t require planning for storage, provisioning cloud instances and configuring on-premises networking.

With the increasing cloud-native solutions popularity, and thus easy access to the infrastructure offered, the Infrastructure as a Code concept flourished. As a result, businesses can significantly reduce the infrastructure set-up time and better utilise already existing human resources to manage manual IT infrastructure.

Minimised Costs

The main issue of monolithic architecture was to confine businesses to fixed and extra resources they had to pay for. This resulted in a time-consuming and costly process as backup and maintenance were extra services. Here comes a cloud-native app where all components function on the cloud.

The compatibility of this app with the cloud helps reduce development, backup, maintenance and usage costs. With open-source tools and systems like serverless networks that utilise a pay-per-use model, costs are reduced significantly.

No Vendor Lock-in

Since cloud native apps involve decentralised services, picking a cloud vendor that assures maintenance, performance, and security is important. However, there are instances of poor quality services as well as pricing plans beyond the business budget with some vendors. Due to the time and effort invested, a company would choose to stick to the same vendor in the traditional form of application.

Cloud-native app development side-steps this vendor lock-in by enabling businesses to use services from different cloud providers. Since everything is designed to run on the cloud-native network, migrating to a cost-friendly cloud and benefit plan is achievable with cloud-native apps.

Troubleshooting Made Easier

With an inherent fault-tolerant mechanism, cloud-native apps are easier to troubleshoot. This mechanism helps trace the origin of the problem much easier in a cloud-native infrastructure since the whole application is divided into microservices where each one of them functions as a service.

After the tracking process, the service is isolated, and the issue is fixed completely at the origin, with zero server downtime.

Final thoughts

The cloud-native concept isn’t new in the IT world. Various companies adopted this concept a few decades ago, and it has featured in numerous cloud computing predictions.

The cloud-native computing architecture accelerates the process of software development and brings high quality, consistency, and integrity to its main areas.