What’s Trending In Cloud Native Development?

Today, companies old and new are moving to the cloud and building a business strategy based on cloud services. Every year, cloud technologies offer the consumer more and more interesting solutions. In this post, we’ll be looking at cloud trends in 2022 and beyond.

Hybrid And Multi-Cloud

Most startups avoid the large budget costs of buying their own equipment by choosing cloud solutions. However, companies that have been operating profitably for many years are more likely to choose a hybrid approach. This means some of the main and critical business applications are located in their own data center, and the rest of their data is in the cloud. One of the most valuable benefits of deploying the hybrid solutions affords businesses the ability to control and secure their own private network data, while less secure and frequently changing storage needs go in the cloud.

In addition, multi-cloud is popular, because data is stored in the clouds of different providers. For example, non-critical information can be hosted in a free cloud, while more important data can be hosted in a rented one. Also, different cloud providers can be selected for different services, depending on your company’s individual needs.

Serverless Cloud

This is an emerging approach to building systems in the cloud. There is no need to buy or rent the hardware to provide server functionality since your developer or IT department does not control the server where your programs run. All details of the operating system, updates, network settings, and other things are hidden from you. This allows developers to focus on software creation with useful functionality, and not on server administration. The serverless service provider automatically provides you with more or less computing resources, depending on the number of operations carried out simultaneously. 

An important advantage of this solution is the ability to quickly and easily scale, with no downtime or exceeding limits due to a sharp increase in traffic. For example, a lot of cloud service providers offer a serverless platform including Amazon Web Services (AWS Lambda), Microsoft Azure (Azure Functions), Google Cloud (Google Cloud Functions), and IBM Cloud (IBM Cloud Code Engine). According to the Serverless Computing Market report, 2022 the global serverless computing market size is projected to reach the US $23,970 million by 2026, from the US $7,712.7 million in 2020. And one important piece of news related to serverless trends was announced in May 2022 by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. As you know he is one of the most active proponents of using serverless cloud platforms and announced the general availability of Azure Container Apps, a Kubernetes-based serverless computing framework. In addition, Microsoft updated its Azure Kubernetes Service, adding integration with Draft, an open-source project that simplifies Kubernetes development. Let’s see what the results are by the end of the year.

Containerization

As IBM experts said, containerization allows applications to be “written once and run anywhere.” 

Containerization is a technology that helps run applications in isolation from the main operating system. The program is packaged in a special container space, within which is support for the environment necessary for it to work.

There is a growing trend toward the virtualization of IT infrastructure. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) transformation – allows you to optimize the cost of IT resources. Businesses will increasingly strive for cybersecurity, lower operating costs, and scalability through the transition from physical to virtual (P2V) environments. 

Monolithic legacy applications are being replaced by microservice-based architectures. Microservices applications must be containerized and managed through an orchestration platform.

More Kubernetes! In 2022 they have been implemented more than ever. The reason is simple: it’s convenient. Kubernetes makes it easy for developers to share applications and software with admins in real-time. Productivity is boosted by making pipelines easier to build, test, and deploy in DevOps. The number of companies supporting Kubernetes is growing faster and faster. The most common reason is its ability to reform cloud applications with container-centric microservices which optimize your cloud experiences. 

Cloud Software – Cloudware

All popular cloud providers have their pros and cons so the multi-cloud strategy allows you to get the best combination of price and quality of services. 

Cloudware is a web-based application or SaaS as a service model. For example, Microsoft provides the SaaS model customers access to MS Office Suite (Office Web Apps) with SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, and other services and applications. Also, there are 4 main types of cloud computing: public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and multi-clouds. The last one we already described in detail above as one of the cloud trends. 

However, just using cloud services will not mean they are utilized efficiently by a company. Most DevOps teams use the cloud, but do it in the wrong way. The results show that:

• 65% of mid-sized organizations use the public cloud; however, only 20% of them use it to its full potential.

If you would like to learn how to work more effectively with clouds, you need to consider their different types. Teams that used hybrid or multi-cloud software deployments were 1.6 times more likely to achieve their organizational performance goals than those that used traditional cloud strategies.

Cloud vs Edge Computing: What’s the Difference?

Cloud and edge computing are one of the hottest topics in the IT industry. According to Gartner, edge computing is a subspecies of distributed computing in which information processing takes place in close proximity to the place where the data was received and will be consumed. This is the main difference between edge computing and cloud computing when information is collected and processed in public or private data centers. 

Edge Computing is an alternative approach to the cloud, against the Internet of Things. It concerns real-time data processing close to the data source, which is considered the “edge” of the network. It’s about running applications as close as possible to the site where the data is created, not to a centralized cloud, data center, or data storage location.

Companies receive big data from machines, people, assets, factories, cars, appliances, cameras, sensors, and satellites. All of this data needs to be processed. Edge computing helps here by allowing you to control the distribution of data load.

Transferring such a high load of information to local servers for processing can be extremely difficult. With the emergence of technologies such as the Internet of Things, and 5G, edge computing has become possible – data is processed and analyzed in real-time, and only the necessary information is provided to the user. Vehicle control systems, adaptive traffic control systems, and delivery of large volumes of video streams are classic examples of edge computing.

Solve Cloud Development Challenges with a Low-Code Platform

Low-code is an approach to creating, configuring, and modifying systems and applications that require little coding or no coding. Low-code platforms use visual interfaces with simple logic and drag-and-drop functions instead of various programming languages. It enables users with no knowledge of programming or software development processes to create their own applications for a variety of purposes.

The new approach is becoming increasingly popular as a faster and easier alternative to traditional software development. Professional developers, analysts, or business users (also named “citizen developers”) choose low-code/no-code technologies to create systems and applications of varying complexity to meet the company’s needs for new IT solutions, business process automation, and accelerated digital transformation

By the end of 2022, low-code software will be implemented in most development environments. Such tools are controversial in the DevOps community but have proven to increase productivity. The business provides an idea that with no-code/low-code platforms, anyone can build applications without software expertise, significantly faster, and at a fraction of the cost. This has been a controversial issue for almost 10 years, and a low-code platform can’t develop a complicated IT system without experienced developers.

Low-code solutions allow developers to focus on the broader vision, whether it’s DevSecOps, Kubernetes, microservices, or serverless computing.

FinOps as the New Standard in Financial Management

FinOps is an operating model for cloud solutions focused on finance. It combines best practices that allow organizations to optimize their cloud expenditure. In addition, financial management in the cloud enhances collaboration between company management and the IT department, finance, and procurement departments. For example, it will allow the IT team to develop as a service organization using cloud technologies, and raise value for the company’s customers.

The FinOps life cycle:

• Informing:

Cost transparency. The platform helps ensure that each team’s spending is traceable by showing the volume and cost of consumption.

• Optimization:

Increasing the effectiveness of all teams. Opportunities for improvement, recommendations, and efficient ways to measure productivity.

• Control:

Management practices creation. Enables achieving your technology, finance, and business goals.

In this way, organizations can apply new cost-saving techniques for performance planning, company optimization, or corporate discount negotiation. Ultimately, it makes the company more efficient and agile.

What is the Future of Cloud-Native Development?

After the pandemic, many organizations are ready to consider not only private but also public clouds when creating their data infrastructure.

Global corporations are faced with the need to work with big data to fulfill all of their customer needs. For this reason among others, companies use cloud development. For example, the path from local infrastructure to the most secure cloud has been demonstrated by manufacturing giant Daimler AG and extremely popular online platforms such as Netflix and Pinterest.

Judging by the rate of development today, the Cloud is definitely not just a trending or temporary technology. It can transform, absorb other practices, or even change its name. 

We are moving towards minimizing the human influence on the development cycle and automating everything that could be automated, and today’s software developers are striving to do it in the best possible way. 

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