Cloud Native Web Application Development: Embrace the Future of Software

As businesses increasingly move towards a digital-first approach, it’s essential to keep up with the latest software development trends to stay competitive. One of the most important trends in this space is cloud native web application development. It offers significant advantages over traditional on-premises development models and focuses on building applications designed to run in cloud computing environments.

A study by Gartner predicts that by 2025, cloud native platforms will serve as the foundation for more than 95% of new digital initiatives. This is a clear indication that the shift is happening in a big way and is happening fast.

What is Cloud Native Web Application Development?

Cloud native web application development involves building applications specifically designed to take advantage of cloud-based resources and services. Instead of traditional physical hardware infrastructure, a cloud-based application is built to run in the cloud, offering benefits such as on-demand scalability, reduced infrastructure costs, and increased flexibility.

Benefits of Cloud Native Web Application Development:

• • Increased Scalability: Cloud native web applications are designed to be more scalable and agile than traditional applications. They can handle more users and traffic with minimal additional effort, enabling your business to automatically scale cloud resources up and down as needed to meet fluctuating demand at the point of change. Unlike traditional deployment models, scaling up does not require significant additional capital investment and time.
  • Faster Deployment: Cloud native web applications can be deployed much faster than traditional applications, drastically improving the speed and efficiency of your application development process. By taking advantage of the cloud, you can quickly and easily deploy new services and applications without worrying about lead time for provisioning the underlying infrastructure. Upgrading cloud native applications is also much easier since they often do not require modifications to a database or other stateful components. The application itself can be updated without causing downtime simply by pushing a new version of the code to the server, enabling teams to rapidly deploy new features and receive feedback from users in a matter of minutes.
  • Improved Resiliency & Reliability: Cloud native web applications are much easier to make resilient than traditional applications and are built with redundancy in mind. They can recover from failures more quickly and continue to function even if part of the system goes down, reducing the risk of data loss due to a single point of failure (SPOF). Cloud native infrastructure enables companies to replace components without causing downtime, providing them with the ability for continuous delivery. Cloud native applications also offer straightforward options for automatic and easily accessible backups. This provides the ability to recover a recent version of your application almost immediately from anywhere if the worst happens, leading to little downtime.
  • Reduced Long-term Costs: Cloud native web applications are inherently lower in cost when properly architected because infrastructure only uses the resources your business needs. Cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), provide all the resources needed to run cloud native applications at a low cost per hour, depending on the capacity needed. Since cloud resources are scaled to the needs of the application, it not only keeps cost optimized but also reduces waste of energy.
  • Increased Flexibility: Cloud native web applications offer increased flexibility as they can be deployed to any geographical region that best suits your business needs. Cloud resources can be scaled up or down as needed to match demand, making your investments incredibly efficient. Readily available cloud functionality allows the development team to focus on application code rather than on infrastructure management, resulting in fast, agile development.
  • Security: Cloud native web applications deliver strategic security features designed with security in mind. Many issues arise from traditional network perimeter security, but the cloud has strong identity foundations to protect data, automates security best practices, and produces traceability on its systems and assets.
  • Distributed Access: Cloud native web applications provide better access to distributed workforces and protection from regional disruptions. This makes them perfect for emergencies like natural disasters or other situations where it might be difficult or impossible for people outside of an area to access a specific region, such as a corporate data center.

Tips for Success with Cloud Native Web Application Development

To ensure the success of your cloud native web application development project, it's important to define its requirements upfront and use cloud-based services and APIs. Use a microservices architecture, deploy applications within a containerized or serverless environment, and automate the deployment and management of your application.

Outsourcing this work to a cloud native application development firm with cloud-based skills and experience is important. Ask them about their processes, security workflows, and whether they follow a standard such as the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Cloud native web application development drives the future of software development and provides businesses with significant benefits, including faster feature deployment, lower IT costs, increased reliability, improved security, and a sustainable environmental footprint. Embrace the future of cloud native web application development and let us help you create a scalable, flexible, and reliable cloud native solution that meets your business needs. Contact us today to learn more!