‘Cloud Native’ is an approach in software development which has surged in popularity in recent years.

A recent study conducted on behalf of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) shows that the number of cloud native developers has increased to 7.1 million worldwide – marking a 51% increase compared to May 2020.

Underpinning this increase is a huge growth in cloud native technologies such as Kubernetes, an open source container management platform now widely used in public cloud architectures and dubbed the “operating system for the cloud”.

So what is really driving this cloud native surge? Ahead of the Cloud First Summit,  DIGIT spoke with Apple engineering manager, Cheryl Hung, to chart the rise of cloud native and discuss the benefits for organisations.

Understanding Cloud Native

The CNCF defines cloud native as a modern approach to software development that enables organisations to “build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private and hybrid clouds”.

Fundamentally, cloud native entails building and running applications which exploit the scale and flexibility that the cloud provides compared to traditional on-premise architectures.

Cheryl says there are a number of clear business benefits to a cloud native architectural approach, and chief among these is resilience.

“One of the big drivers of cloud native is improved resilience,” she says. “Having 24/7 availability and being able to still operate despite machines going down is very important.”

“The pandemic really put this into focus, because a lot of companies that were running their own data centres quickly realised they couldn’t have engineers drive over to a site and resolve a situation when it occurred.”

Recent figures from Gartner show that the number of enterprises leveraging cloud has increased significantly since the beginning of the pandemic, underlining the importance of a cloud native approach amidst a period of remote operations.

Another factor driving the popularity of cloud native is the heightened development speed that businesses can expect. In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, the ability for businesses to roll-out new features or products more efficiently offers huge benefits and enables companies to keep pace with competitors, Cheryl says.

“Higher development velocity is really key here. You want your developers to be pushing out those new features as quickly as possible to that you can maintain your competitive edge.

“Cloud native helps this a lot as the infrastructural flexibility you can draw upon allows for a more efficient and fluid process.”

Some of the world’s top organisations have embraced cloud native, Cheryl notes, such as Uber, Airbnb, Netflix or Apple. In fact, Apple joined the CNCF end-user community in 2019, taking its place alongside Adidas, Atlassian, Coinbase and dozens more.

For organisations like Apple, which has a reputation for being a pioneer in cloud native computing, the flexibility of this approach lends well given the scale of the company.

“Apple services have really shown huge growth in the last few years,” she says. “Obviously the hardware was a big part of it. But in order to use any of this hardware you have to have services to back it up and make it useable.”

Balancing Efficiency & Experience

Cheryl notes that an early driver of cloud native was improved resource efficiency. But in her experience, this isn’t as big a focus for organisations today.

Generally speaking, most would assume that any organisation would value an approach which augmented resource efficiency. But in a customer-driven world, that’s often not the case.

“It makes sense in a way. But I think for most companies, the drive to ship a better customer experience far outweighs the benefit of saving money for the sake of saving money,” she asserts.

“If you can spend one million dollars on infrastructure, but get ten million dollars in sales from that, then it makes far more sense than trying to save money.”

The Benefits for Devs

For developers, the benefits of cloud native are particularly acute, Cheryl believes. Coming from a dev background, she views cloud native as an approach which has transformational potential.

“As a developer, you really want to move as quickly as possible. You want to build that feature, you want to ship it and you want it to be available for your users rapidly,” she says.

“This is why development velocity is such a huge benefit for both broader organisations and individual devs. Faster release cycles lead to happier developers, and that’s a big plus for any business.”

In recent years, Cheryl concedes there have been some challenges in emphasising the benefits of cloud native to developers. There was an early period of mild cynicism, but that has begun to dissipate.

“A big challenge in cloud native has been that, for many developers, it’s often not clear why any of this matters. So it’s important to be up front about how they need to change workflow in order to take advantage of this approach.

“But that can be difficult in some cases. It’s a big cultural change.”

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Cultural difficulties aren’t limited to frontline workers, she adds. In some instances cloud native alters the nature of leadership, which can result in a degree of hesitancy and pushback.

“I think the biggest change is that cloud native tends to be driven from the bottom up. It’s very common to see one engineer who starts experimenting with something like Kubernetes.

“And they’re the ones who really propagate it outwards within their team, and then across the larger organisation. So it’s not the case where it’s a top down decision from the CIO or CTO.

“And this can be a big change for some in high-level positions.”

In this context, education is key. Cheryl insists that engaging with leadership can be critical as it allows them to understand – and ultimately embrace- the benefits of making this kind of transformation.

A New Movement

To Cheryl, this confluence of technological and cultural changes means cloud native is more than just the latest evolutionary stage of business practice, it’s a movement. And one that shows no sign of stopping.

In fact, Gartner predicts that cloud native platforms will “serve as the foundation” for more than 95% of new digital initiatives by 2025 – up from less than 40% in 2021.

“I call this a movement as it’s not just a product or technology that some vendor is selling and people then consume. It’s a whole open source ecosystem where people come in, get familiar with it and start contributing back to it,” she says.

“They become maintainers, they feel a sense of ownership over it. It’s an amazing feedback loop where the more people invest into it the more they get back from the community – so it shows that people are just as important as the technology.”

Cloud First Summit 2022 | Join the Conversation

Cheryl will discuss cloud trends and outline some of the key 2022 predictions in this space at the upcoming Cloud First Summit, held live and in-person at Dynamic Earth on Thursday 16^th June.

For more details and information on how to register, please visit: www.cloudfirstsummit.com