The next step is cloud native. An application is specifically designed for the cloud to take advantage of all its strengths in terms of scalability, high availability, resiliency or interoperability. “Unlike monolithic applications, the granular approach of the cloud native allows new functionalities to be deployed easily, thus reducing time to market,” says Mohammed Sijelmassi, Chief Technology Officer at Sopra Steria.
To further accelerate development, a company can call on various ready-to-use cloud services offered by providers. These can include authentication or monitoring services. “Why rewrite the umpteenth identity management brick when the cloud is full of very good solutions?” asks Mohammed Sijelmassi. “We might as well focus on the differentiating elements for an enterprise.
With these assets, cloud-native application development has a bright future. By 2025, Gartner estimates that more than 95 percent of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30 percent in 2021. IDC, meanwhile, predicts that the share of cloud-native applications will exceed 90 percent by the same time frame.
Microservices, containers, mesh, APIs and DevOps
The environment that hosts this new generation of applications meets a number of prerequisites. The cloud native approach is inseparable from the microservices architecture. An application or service is broken down into small software bricks that can be deployed, upgraded and managed autonomously.
Microservices is all about containerization and the flexibility it brings. By encapsulating an application so that it can run on any server, software container technology allows you to ignore the underlying infrastructure. Kubernetes, an open source brick that has become essential, will manage and orchestrate container clusters.
The native cloud also uses the service mesh. This service mesh corresponds to an infrastructure layer specifically dedicated to an application. It is thus possible to see how the various components interact with each other and thus to optimize the performance of the said application more easily.
Finally, to end with the buzzwords, cloud native of course uses APIs to call third-party cloud services. By offering to quickly deploy updates to any part of the application, it is also part of the DevOps and CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) movement.
Lack of internal skills
If, on paper, cloud native ticks all the boxes, there are still a few obstacles to overcome before it becomes widespread. An OutSystems study points to a lack of in-house skills and expertise. “Thinking in terms of microservices application architecture requires a certain maturity,” says Alexandre Cozette, OutSystems’ technical director for france. “Cloud developers need to master the principles of containerization and be familiar with the offerings of hyperscalers.”
To address this talent shortage, OutSystems announced Project Neo in November, a next-generation low-code platform that allows developers to build full-stack cloud-native applications while taking care of all the technical “plumbing” behind them.
“Cloud native adds complexity,” adds Mohammed Sijelmassi. “You have to design the architecture to break down an application into microservices that are sufficiently flexible and controllable. Getting to the right level of granularity requires some skill building. If we describe services that are too large, we don’t take advantage of the scalability of the cloud.”
Sopra Steria’s CTO also mentions the cyber component. “A company agencies services that it doesn’t have 100% control over. The design of this type of architecture must be based on a ‘by design’ security approach.”
Finally, he says, you shouldn’t become “a cloud-native ayatollah” and throw out the entire existing on-premise environment. “In a hybrid approach, you have to ask yourself what you are keeping and what you are rewriting. A neobank can afford to build its information system from scratch in the cloud. A traditional bank, on the other hand, has to deal with the full weight of its legacy.