Cloud Development Essentials: Key Functions of Advanced Cloud-Based Systems

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, cloud-native development has emerged as a powerful approach for businesses seeking to stay ahead of the competition. This modern methodology, characterised by container-based infrastructure, microservices architecture, and continuous delivery and integration, offers numerous benefits.

Microservices and Containers

At the heart of cloud-native development lies the microservices architecture, an approach to designing applications as a set of small, independent services. Each service performs a specific function, promoting modularity and scalability. Containers, on the other hand, serve as the computing vehicle for deploying these individual microservices. They offer performance and speed advantages over traditional virtual machines.

Resilience and Flexibility

One of the key benefits of cloud-native architecture is its ability to promote resilience. Engineers and architects can design structures that remain operational despite environmental hiccups, ensuring business continuity. Additionally, cloud-native architecture offers greater flexibility, allowing businesses to design applications that run on either a public or private cloud without modification.

Business Growth and Efficiency

Cloud native architecture can help businesses stay ahead of competitors by viewing the cloud as a source of business growth. It enables quick development and execution of applications in response to consumer demands, fostering agility and innovation. Furthermore, it aligns operations and business needs by automating IT operations, eliminating the possibility of loss due to human error, and enabling live patching and updates at all stages of the stack.

Security and Observability

Security is a paramount concern in cloud-native development. Organisations like Trend Micro have embraced the Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) to address security issues. Trend Micro's solution, Trend Vision One, has helped improve endpoint visibility, reduce attack vectors, and speed incident response by about 25-30%.

In terms of observability, cloud-native development allows for end-user and device input to be captured and analysed. This data can be used to iterate against market priorities and key performance indicators (KPIs), and to monitor and maintain resources to ensure service level objectives (SLOs) are fulfilled.

DevOps and Full-Cycle Development

The collaboration between IT operations and software developers, known as DevOps, is a cornerstone of cloud-native development. The full-cycle development of cloud-native applications involves developers doing just enough upfront architectural planning, coding modifications against various services, and automating QA-style verification.

Edge Management and Progressive Delivery

Cloud-native development also offers self-service for new features, with centralized configuration of sensible defaults like TLS compliance and rate-limiting for DDoS security, and a decentralized structure for other cross-functional traffic management specifications. Progressive delivery, a key aspect of cloud-native development, enables automated build, verification, implementation, release, and observability of applications, and centralises the codification and validation of consistency and compliance properties.

Streamlined Operations

By embracing cloud technology such as Kubernetes-based platforms, the operations team can simplify platform provisioning and self-service framework implementations for the developers. This streamlined approach allows developers to focus on coding and innovation, driving business growth and success.

In conclusion, cloud-native development offers numerous benefits for businesses, from resilience and flexibility to business growth and efficiency. By adopting this approach, organisations can stay ahead of the competition, ensure security, and streamline their operations, setting themselves up for success in the digital age.