Cloud-Native Development: What CTOs Ought to Know

Terms of use

Terms of Use

The use of this site and the content contained therein is governed by the Terms of Use. When you use this site you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Use and that you accept and will be bound by the terms hereof and such terms as may be modified from time to time.

All text, graphics, audio, design and other works on the site are the copyrighted works of nasscom unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Content on the site is for personal use only and may be downloaded provided the material is kept intact and there is no violation of the copyrights, trademarks, and other proprietary rights. Any alteration of the material or use of the material contained in the site for any other purpose is a violation of the copyright of nasscom and / or its affiliates or associates or of its third-party information providers. This material cannot be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for non-personal use without obtaining the prior permission from nasscom.
The nasscom Members login is for the reference of only registered nasscom Member Companies.
nasscom reserves the right to modify the terms of use of any service without any liability. nasscom reserves the right to take all measures necessary to prevent access to any service or termination of service if the terms of use are not complied with or are contravened or there is any violation of copyright, trademark or other proprietary right.
From time to time nasscom may supplement these terms of use with additional terms pertaining to specific content (additional terms). Such additional terms are hereby incorporated by reference into these Terms of Use.

Disclaimer

The Company information provided on the nasscom web site is as per data collected by companies. nasscom is not liable on the authenticity of such data.
nasscom has exercised due diligence in checking the correctness and authenticity of the information contained in the site, but nasscom or any of its affiliates or associates or employees shall not be in any way responsible for any loss or damage that may arise to any person from any inadvertent error in the information contained in this site. The information from or through this site is provided "as is" and all warranties express or implied of any kind, regarding any matter pertaining to any service or channel, including without limitation the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement are disclaimed. nasscom and its affiliates and associates shall not be liable, at any time, for any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, computer virus, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorised access to, alteration of, or use of information contained on the site. No representations, warranties or guarantees whatsoever are made as to the accuracy, adequacy, reliability, completeness, suitability or applicability of the information to a particular situation.
nasscom or its affiliates or associates or its employees do not provide any judgments or warranty in respect of the authenticity or correctness of the content of other services or sites to which links are provided. A link to another service or site is not an endorsement of any products or services on such site or the site.
The content provided is for information purposes alone and does not substitute for specific advice whether investment, legal, taxation or otherwise. nasscom disclaims all liability for damages caused by use of content on the site.
All responsibility and liability for any damages caused by downloading of any data is disclaimed.
nasscom reserves the right to modify, suspend / cancel, or discontinue any or all sections, or service at any time without notice.

For any grievances under the Information Technology Act 2000, please get in touch with Grievance Officer, Mr. Anirban Mandal at data-query@nasscom.in.

New

See all

No notification found.

Cloud-Native Development: What CTOs Ought to Know

calsoftinc

@calsoftinc

February 14, 2022

Cloud Computing

223

We've highlighted what CXOs should think about before migrating their infrastructure to the cloud in our previous blogs. After looking at the best methods for migrating workloads to the cloud, we should look into how CTOs can fully utilize the cloud's benefits.

For CTOs to understand the implications of cloud-native development we need to look into the fundamentals of cloud-native development. Does the question arise what is cloud-native development?

According Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), cloud-native tech enables organizations to build and run scalable applications in public, private, and hybrid clouds. Cloud-Native applications as we know them uses a microservices architecture, which allocates resources to each service that applications use

Components and Layers of Cloud-Native Development

Now that we know cloud-native applications operates with a microservices architecture, we need to look into the various capabilities of Cloud-Native Development:

Microservices based: Microservices typically break down an app into a series of independently deployable modules/ services. Each module references its data and supports a specific goal(s). These modules are then communicated with each other through Application Program Interfaces (APIs).
API-based: Application Program Interfaces (APIs) connect Microservices and containers, providing the applications a means of communication, enabling them to act as a glue between the loosely coupled services.
Containers: One of the main benefits of cloud-native development is the increase in containerization. Put simply containers are a type of function which logically isolates an application, empowering it to run independently of the physical resources. One of the major benefits of a container is that it refrains the microservices from interacting with each other, barring applications to consume the shared resources of the host.

Now that we have seen the broad components of the Cloud Native developments, we need to delve into the cloud-native development layers. A typical cloud-based application can be bifurcated into 4 layers:

The application definition and development layer: The topmost layer focuses on the tool leveraged by developers to build apps such as databases, communication systems, container images, and deploy DevOps pipeline.
The provisioning layer: This layer is concerned with securing and building the environment where the application will run. This is also known as infrastructure as a code, enabling the developers to store images in a repository, automate the build, and finally address the security vulnerabilities through scanning and policy management, Identity and Access management tools.
The runtime layer: This layer is responsible for overseeing the container runtime which is typically a docker application.
The orchestration and management layer: This layer brings together the tools required to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications that take care of scheduling and orchestration. In most cases, this is handled by Kubernetes, along with Service Discovery, API gateway, service mesh, and service proxy.

Benefits of Cloud-Native Applications

Now that we know about the capabilities of cloud-native development, let us look into the benefits of Cloud-Native Applications:

Zero Downtime: With cloud-native development, container orchestrators such as Kubernetes organizations can deploy software updates with zero downtime.
Scalability: With microservices in the picture, independent modules can scale up based on the demands, ensuring that other modules are not affected.
Portability: Interoperability and portability of workloads coupled with the modular nature of the cloud-native application and development also dictates that modules are vendor-neutral, reducing the risk of vendor lock-in, empowering the organizations to utilize
Reliability: Because of the modular nature of the application and development, if one module fails, there is no effect on the adjacent modules.

Automation: One of the major benefits of cloud-native development is that you can leverage DevOps automation features to enable continuous delivery and deployment of the software changes at a regular interval.

Best Practices CTOs must consider for Cloud-Native Development

With rapid adoptions of the cloud adoptions and migrations, CTOs of the organizations are now looking forward to the application modernization and business modernization aspects of the business. While it typically deals with the changes in organizational culture, processes, and technology, the CTOs should adopt 5 key practices to drive the organization-wise adoption of cloud-native development.

Adopt a Cloud-Native Mindset:
Cloud-native development should be gone above and beyond new technology and platform, rather it should be seen as a shift in culture and mindset. Rather than taking a product mindset, it requires a service-oriented mindset. The CTOS must prepare the organizations to embrace the DevOps principles. It should start by restructuring teams based on their capabilities.

Understand the Technologies Involved:
Cloud-native development mainly leverages open-source technologies. This results in the development of an understanding of how these technologies work and how they can be managed effectively. Given that there is always a risk associated with the adoption of new technologies as it impacts the work culture of an organization, CTO’s need to make a risk assessment and identify the changes required to adopt the cloud-native technologies.

Empower Your People:
Begin with an assessment of the existing skillsets available with the company and determine the support the cloud-native DevOps team might need. You need to analyze the skills of employees to address any gaps. Also, identify the requirements of your teams and give them access to the tools, and training required.

Assessing Organization Capabilities:
Cloud-native technology enables developers to design and deploy reliable and scalable services in a fast-paced manner. However, CTOs should support these by aligning the processes and work culture along with it. To do that, CTOs need to understand the existing processes and organizational capabilities for faster deployment and dynamic workflows.

Automate IT:
Essential to fast-track the delivery cycle, eradicating manual tasks. Automation could be inclusive of network and infra provisioning, application deployments, and configs, which then can be extended further into containers, computing, securities, and testing.

In a Nutshell

With the rapid adoption of the cloud, cloud-native development offers huge opportunities to a business, transforming the way applications are built and managed. There lies a humongous task ahead of the CTOs to steer the organizations through the process of adopting new culture, and technology. Be it application modernization or business modernization, cloud-native development enables organizations by selecting the right technology stack.

#cloud #cloudnative #cloudcomputing #technology #security #DevOps #API #APIgateway #microservices

Disclaimer

That the contents of third-party articles/blogs published here on the website, and the interpretation of all information in the article/blogs such as data, maps, numbers, opinions etc. displayed in the article/blogs and views or the opinions expressed within the content are solely of the author's; and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of NASSCOM or its affiliates in any manner. NASSCOM does not take any liability w.r.t. content in any manner and will not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any kind of liability arising out of any act, error or omission. The contents of third-party article/blogs published, are provided solely as convenience; and the presence of these articles/blogs should not, under any circumstances, be considered as an endorsement of the contents by NASSCOM in any manner; and if you chose to access these articles/blogs , you do so at your own risk.

calsoftinc

Calsoft is ISV preferred product engineering services partner in Storage, Networking, Virtualization, Cloud, IoT and analytics domains.