Cloud-Native Applications

A cloud native application is an application developed using cloud-based technologies, fully hosted and managed in the cloud.

Cloud based applications are usually applications which have been re-architected to run properly on a cloud operating system whereas cloud native applications have been hosted in the cloud from the very beginning.

They run in cloud end-to-end, meaning that they have been written, tested, and deployed in the cloud, using technologies and services that are cloud-based and not just re-hosted, subsequently, to a cloud computing environment. 

Three main characteristics:

• They're not limited to certain public cloud infrastructures

• They scale better since they tap into the cloud platform's elasticity

• They're built using a set of cloud-specific DevOps methodologies, technologies, and architectural approaches: decoupled systems, serverless, lightweight containers, infrastructure as code, microservices, orchestration.

Six Reasons to build cloud native applications:

• Managing the infrastructure gets easier

• Resilient to failure

• Release your application faster

• Reduce costs

• Scale up, fast

• Provide a better user experience