For this, applications are developed on cloud infrastructure using modern tools and techniques. Using cloud-native technologies benefits businesses as they enable quick and frequent changes to applications without affecting service delivery, this helps businesses break barriers to innovation and improve their competitive advantage.

For cloud-native applications to be effective and deliver on their promise, it is important to plan the right cloud architecture and document the cloud engineering strategy so the apps can be scalable, flexible, and resilient.

Why Enterprises are Building Cloud Native Applications?

The availability of digital technologies such as cloud, AI/ML, and IoT are transforming the way businesses operate today. Increased access to data is seeing a corresponding increase in the need for storage and computing power. Traditional, on-prem systems cannot cope with this pace of change and the investment can be formidable.

By modernizing their application and migrating to the cloud, businesses can reap many benefits. But, modernizing goes beyond mere migration of apps. Some or most apps must be made cloud-native to provide the intended benefits, which include:

• Improved Efficiency: Cloud-native applications are developed using the agile approach including DevOps and continuous delivery. Scalable applications are being built using cloud services, automated tools, and modern design culture.
• Lower Cost: The cost of infrastructure is drastically reduced when businesses opt for the cloud-native approach as they share resources and pay only peruse.
• High Availability: Building robust and highly accessible applications is made possible by cloud-native technology. In order to give customers a great experience, feature updates don’t result in app downtime, and businesses can scale up app resources during busy times of year.
• Flexibility, Scalability, and Resilience: The traditional apps are called monolithic because they are a single block structure composed of all the required functionalities. Any upgradation can be disruptive and needs changes to be made across the block, making them more rigid and hard to scale. Cloud-native applications, on the other hand, are made up of several small, interdependent functionalities called microservices. As a result, changes can be made to the different units without affecting the rest of the software, making them more resilient, flexible, and scalable.
• Easier Management: Cloud Native architecture and development are containerized and utilize cloud services by default. It is often called serverless and tends to reduce infrastructure management.

Cloud Native Architecture: Designed for Scale

Cloud-native architecture is designed such that it is easy to maintain, cost-effective, and self-healing. It does not depend on physical servers, hence called serverless technology, and provides greater flexibility.

APIs are needed for the cloud-native microservices to communicate with each other using an event-driven architecture for enhanced performance of every application. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is an open-source platform that facilitates cloud-native development with support for projects such as Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy.

The cloud-native architecture typically consists of:

• Immutable Infrastructure: The servers hosting cloud-native applications do not change even after the deployment of an application. In case additional computing resources are needed, the app is migrated to a new, high-performance server, and does not require a manual upgrade.
• Loosely-Coupled Microservices: The different functionalities available as microservices are loosely coupled – that is, they are not integrated as in a monolith, and remain independent of each other, only communicating when needed. This allows changes to be made to individual applications without affecting the overall performance of the software.
• Application Programming Interface (API): Microservices communicate with each other using APIs and state what data a microservice requires to deliver a particular result.
• Service Mesh: The communication between the different microservices is managed by a software layer called the service mesh in the cloud infrastructure. This can also be used for adding more functions without the need to write new code.
• Containerized Microservices: The microservice code and other required files, such as  resource files, libraries, and scripts, are packed in containers, which are the smallest compute unit in the cloud-native application. As a result, cloud-native applications can run independently of the underlying operating system and hardware, allowing them to be run from on-premise infrastructure or on the cloud, including hybrid clouds.
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Small, frequent changes are made to the software to improve its efficiency and identify and troubleshoot errors quickly. This improves the quality of the code on an ongoing basis. CD makes the microservices always ready to be deployed to the cloud as and when needed. Together, the two make software delivery efficient.

Overcoming Cloud-Native Development Challenges

Despite the many advantages and ease of development and maintenance of cloud-native applications, it is not without challenges. As the business expands, so can the number of microservices, requiring more oversight and maintenance. It requires strong integrators, APIs, and the right tools for improved management of asynchronous operations. Ensuring that each integrates well with the overall system and performs as expected is critical. Further, regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) make security and governance critical for compliance.

These challenges make comprehensive testing and quality assurance essential. Therefore, a good cloud-native app development approach should include:

• Assessing the needs: A good understanding of the required functionality is essential to start from scratch or modernize existing apps. Building cloud-native apps from the ground up may be more beneficial even for businesses that are modernizing so that they can leverage the advantages better.
• Designing the architecture: Right from the cloud model to use to whether to build from scratch or repurpose are some of the many decisions that need to be taken at this stage. This will influence the nature of the technical stack the business should opt for.
• Security and Governance: While the cloud service provider may have their own security protocols for the servers, each organization must have its own governance policy and implement security to protect data and ensure compliance.
• Testing and QA: Testing each microservice individually and as a composite unit is critical to ensure performance and customer satisfaction.

FAQs

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Having said that, the next stage in software development model evolution is already here – in the form of GitOps. As cloud-native app development gains popularity, there is a greater need for simplifying cloud infrastructure management. GitOps uses Git, an open-source version control system (VCS), for application and infrastructure configuration management and thrives on the DevOps ecosystem and culture.

Today, both GitOps and DevOps are facilitating collaboration between development and ops teams and making the development process more efficient. Where they differ is in the approach to achieving this goal. Git provides developers with a unified view of the source code. It stores all changes in a central location, which enables easy auditing and tracking of any modifications to the system. For example, with Git, it’s easy to track application updates and infrastructure configurations. Git also allows teams to revert to an earlier commit without compromising on quality. It ensures continuous delivery, deployment, and version control of applications as well as infrastructure as code and deployments.

GitOps can be used independently or as an extension of DevOps. Incorporating Git in the DevOps software delivery process improves the orchestration of projects, enabling efficient and reliable development and delivery of software applications.

For instance, Deutsche Telekom, a multinational telco group that has more than 220,000 employees working across offices in 50 countries, built a multi-site, multicluster, multi-infrastructure, Kubernetes engine using open-source technologies. It manages several hundred clusters by combining GitOps and the declarative system with Kubernetes. This allows scaling up based on need faster and at no additional cost.

Read this insightful article on the Top 5 Tools for API Integration in Modern Cloud-Based Applications.

GitOps vs DevOps

Some of the key differences between GitOps and DevOps are:

DevOps focuses on automation and GitOps on version control.

DevOps engineers use Jenkins as the primary tool for continuous integration and delivery. Sometimes they use it with Ansible and Chef. GitOps engineers use Git. Sometimes they also use Kubernetes for making changes. GitOps offers the following advantages:

• Code branching and merging becomes easier.
• A large variety of third-party integrations is possible.
• It helps with version control.

Deployment correctness is manual in DevOps and automated in Git

In DevOps, while the operations team manages the infrastructure and deploys the code, the development team ensures correctness of the deployments. In GitOps, declarative configuration files stored in Git repositories automate the verification and check for correctness before deployment. This also improves the accuracy of the application. As a result, the risk of errors is less and in case of errors, rollback is possible. Of course, Git repository management requires technical expertise and organization.

Git comes with version control and eliminates manual intervention.

Git enables version control, which simplifies automation as it allows the code and configuration to be pushed directly from the system to the production environment. This accelerates deployment while eliminating the risk of errors due to manual intervention.

Managing Infrastructure Code: DevOps vs GitOps

DevOps follows declarative and prescriptive approaches to operations. Therefore, it can be used for models of monolithic applications or those with limited componentization. DevOps monitors, configures, and manages infrastructure as a code for solving problems around infrastructure changes, such as during modernization.

GitOps, on the other hand, uses a declarative approach and is becoming popular for managing modern cloud infrastructure. When developing containerized applications, it optimizes CI/CD on Kubernetes and accelerates deployment. For DevOps teams familiar with Kubernetes, using GitOps pipelines is easy and needs minimal changes to the existing workflows for automated software delivery.

6 More Reasons Why GitOps is Great

While it improves the delivery cycle and software efficiency, Git is not without its challenges. Git requires highly technical skills to manage and maintain the software. If the changes are not merged or managed properly, it can result in data loss. It also requires the development and operations teams to collaborate more closely, which can be challenging in a large organization.

Having said that, there are many benefits of incorporating the GitOps approach to software development.

• Businesses can become more agile and responsive to customer needs as it accelerates production time, feature management, and updating of Kubernetes.
• With Git Repo, tasks such as pull requests for the Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration (CI/CD) pipelines can be made reproducible.
• It improves efficiency of workflows through end-to-end standardization and automation.
• GitOps improves stability and reliability by providing audit logs that help validate changes.
• Its robust cryptography ensures the security of the environment, reduces downtime, and improves response times to incidents.

GitOps Use Cases

GitOps can be used in a variety of scenarios, such as,

• Slicing Networks: GitOps can be used to lower costs by allowing service providers to slice service tiers and letting users pay according to bandwidth usage.

• Documentation and Writing: VCS such as GitHub or bitbucket can be used to store ASCII docs. They can be used for product documentation or other writing projects. It even enables checking grammar and spelling and the document can be converted to any format such as doc, PDF, or ePUB.

• Editing for Static Websites: GitOps simplifies the editing of complex markdown files in static websites.

Indium for GitOps Approach

Indium is a data engineering, software development, and quality assurance company with vast experience in DevOps and automation. Our team of experienced developers works closely with our customers to create bespoke solutions that accelerate development and break barriers to innovation. Our developers have the necessary qualifications and expertise in GitOps, DevOps, Kubernetes, Jenkins, and other tools needed to create the right architecture and solutions for our customers based on their goals and needs.

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