Businesses today don’t just want apps that work, they need apps that grow, adapt, and recover without ever crashing. Cloud-native platforms make this possible by changing how organizations build and manage applications.
Cloud-native platforms allow you to build, run, and deploy applications with all the flexibility and scalability of cloud environments. The global Cloud-Native Applications Market is predicted to grow by 23.7% CAGR from 2023 to 2028, to reach a market value of $17 billion.
Read on to learn what cloud-native means, and how it can help you with application development and management.
What Is a Cloud-Native Platform?
Cloud-native applications are designed and built specifically to run in cloud environments and leverage cloud features such as scalable infrastructure, distributed data storage, and automated management tools. Cloud-native apps are usually built as independent microservices that can be deployed, managed, and updated individually. This approach is more flexible and resilient compared to traditional on-premises or monolithic applications, making it ideal for dynamic, large-scale environments.
Simply put, cloud-native apps are structured as small, flexible parts, so you can fix or improve one component without affecting the rest. This concept makes the software more adaptable and reliable. It is ideal for fast-growing businesses or those needing to respond quickly to change.
Key Components of Cloud-Native Platforms
Cloud-native platforms comprise several vital components that collaborate to enable the creation, deployment, and scaling of applications in diverse cloud environments. Let’s take a look at the most common:
- Containerization: Bundles applications into containers, which are lightweight, isolated units that deploy in cloud environments.
- Microservices Architecture: Breaks applications into small, independent services that run separately but work together. This approach makes updating, scaling, and maintaining each part easier without impacting the whole application.
- Orchestrating AI Agents: Uses AI to simplify, and automate container deployment and scaling. Instead of relying on manual input, we can use LLMs to help us with orchestration.
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automates building, testing, and deployment to ensure efficient testing of code changes before deployment, resulting in smoother updates.
- Service Mesh: Manages communication between microservices to allow for secure, reliable interactions. It simplifies application management with features like load balancing, traffic routing, and security settings.
- Observability Tools: Provide live insights by monitoring application performance and health across the distributed system, helping you quickly identify issues.
Top 7 Benefits of Cloud-Native Platforms
Overall, cloud-native platforms bring a new level of flexibility to application management, helping businesses cut overhead and respond quickly to changing demands. These platforms provide the following key benefits:
- Scalability: You can scale applications up or down as required because each microservice operates independently, without subjecting you to any downtime.
- Flexibility: Your team can efficiently create, deploy, and improve applications to meet market conditions, leverage new operational channels, and satisfy customer demands.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Container-based architecture minimizes resource consumption, reducing the need for costly infrastructure and lowering operational costs.
- Resilience: Distributed architecture and components enhance fault tolerance and system reliability, enabling applications to function even if some parts fail.
- Portability: Applications developed on cloud-native platforms run smoothly in any cloud environment with minimal configuration changes.
- Faster Time-to-Market: CI/CD features automate building, testing, and deployment processes, speeding up development cycles and allowing for rapid feature implementation.
- Improved Developer Productivity: Streamlined development processes allow developers to focus more on business logic instead of managing the underlying infrastructure.
However, achieving these results may require careful planning and skilled management of microservices.
Use Cases for Cloud-Native Platforms in Distribution and Manufacturing
Cloud-native platforms play a crucial role in distribution and manufacturing across a variety of industries. Their widespread adoption stems from their practicality in supporting greater application availability, better supply chain visibility, and improved operational efficiency. The most prominent use cases of cloud-native platforms include:
- E-commerce Platforms: Cloud-native technology allows e-commerce stores to provide scalable, responsive online shopping experiences tailored to customer demands.
- Internet of Things (IoT) Applications: Cloud-native solutions manage and process data from any number of connected devices.
- Financial Services: FinTech companies use cloud-native platforms to build secure, compliant applications that safely handle large-scale, sensitive customer data.
- Media Streaming Services: These platforms ensure smooth content delivery to millions of users by maintaining high availability.
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems: Organizations also employ cloud-native platforms to improve scalability and flexibility, allowing for seamless data integration and real-time analytics across distributed business functions. This setup supports rapid updates and adapts quickly to evolving business needs.
- Healthcare Applications: The healthcare sector increasingly adopts cloud-native systems to manage patient data and enable telemedicine services, providing secure and reliable access to critical health solutions.
Best Practices for Implementing Cloud-Native Platforms
As organizations transition to cloud-native setups, adopting best practices can help you unlock the platform’s full potential. Here are some essential practices that keep cloud-native environments operating smoothly:
1. Embrace DevOps Culture: For cloud-native platforms to run effectively, it’s key to adopt a DevOps culture. This approach encourages teams to break down silos, share responsibilities, and stay aligned throughout the software lifecycle. Automated tools like CI/CD pipelines help standardize and speed up updates, ensuring new features/fixes are implemented easily and without disruption. Adopting DevOps also means making continuous improvements, optimizing workflows, and quickly addressing any issues to keep applications stable and responsive.
2. Design for Resilience: Cloud-native applications are often spread across multiple services and environments, and should be built in a way they can keep running, even if parts of the system break down. This means building in failover options so that if one component fails, others can take over. Regular health checks ensure each part of the system is functioning, while self-healing features, like automatic restarts, lets applications recover quickly from errors and minimizes disruptions, keeping your services operational.
3. Prioritize Security: Cloud-native setups need security built into every layer to protect against threats. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to limit exposure, and grant people only the access they require. Adopt the least privilege principle to reduce each user’s permissions to a minimum. Encrypt data in transit and at rest. Run regular security checks to detect any vulnerabilities. With these basics covered, your platform can better protect sensitive information and minimize breaches.
4. Optimize for Performance: Cloud-native applications need to be fast. Use caching to store frequently accessed data closer to users, cutting down on how often the app needs to pull from the back end. Adding content delivery networks (CDNs) to your system lets users connect to servers closest to them. Monitoring resource use and tuning configurations as traffic changes can further help the app handle high demand without slowing down.
5. Monitor and Observe: Set up real-time monitoring to help you proactively identify problems before they can impact users. Add logging and tracing to capture detailed data on how different parts of the app are performing. Together, monitoring, logging, and tracing provide a complete view of the app’s health.
Why Boomi Is the Perfect Partner for Cloud-Native Integration
Cloud-native platforms are transforming the way organizations build, deploy, and manage applications, offering flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. However, to fully realize these benefits, effective integration across your systems is essential.
The Boomi Enterprise Platform is a comprehensive integration platform that connects applications, data, and processes across cloud-native environments, making it easier for businesses to scale and manage diverse systems. Key Boomi capabilities include:
- Multi-Cloud Support: Boomi simplifies integration with major cloud providers and on-premises systems, offering your business the flexibility to thrive in a cloud-native or hybrid setup.
- Containerized Architecture: The platform uses a containerized architecture, allowing quick deployment and scaling of integration processes.
- Microservices-Friendly Design: The solution supports integration with microservices-based applications, making it the perfect platform for building and deploying cloud-native applications.
- Built-In DevOps Capabilities: Boomi’s built-in DevOps features streamline the development and deployment of integration solutions.
- Flexible Runtime Options: The platform supports cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployment scenarios, allowing you to choose the best environment for your needs.
- AI-Powered Recommendations: Boomi offers intelligent suggestions for optimizing integration flows, allowing you to quickly build efficient and scalable solutions.
Learn more about how Boomi can accelerate your cloud-native integration initiatives by signing up for a free trial today.