Cloud Native: What Does It Mean for Your Business?

We witness how the world of IT constantly changes. Today, like never before, it is more often defined as “being THE business” rather than just “supporting the business”. In other words, the conventional application architectures and development methods are slowly becoming inadequate in this new world. Grape Up, playing a key role in the cloud migration strategy, helps Fortune 1000 companies make a smooth transition. We build apps that support the business itself, we advocate the agile methodology, and implement DevOps to optimize performance.

To clarify the idea behind cloud native technologies, we’ve put together the most important insights to help you and your team understand the essentials and benefits of Cloud Native Applications:

Microservices architecture

First and foremost, one must come to terms with the fact that the traditional application architecture means complex development, long testing and releasing new features only in a specific period. Whereas, the microservices approach is nothing like that. It deconstructs an application into many functional components. These components can be updated and deployed separately without having any impact on other parts of the application.

Depending on its functionality, every microservice can be updated as often as needed. For instance, a microservice that contains functionalities of a dynamic business offering will not affect other parts of the app that barely change at all. Thanks to this, an application can be developed without changing its fundamental architecture. Gone are the days when IT teams had to alter most of the application just to change one piece.

Operational design

One of the biggest issues that our customers face before the migration is the burden of moving new code releases into production. Along with monolithic architectures that combine the whole code into one executable, new code releases require deploying the entire application. Because production environment isn’t the same as development environment, it often becomes impossible for developers to detect potential bugs before the release. Also, testing new features without moving the whole environment to the new app version can become tricky. This, in turn, complicates releasing new code. Microservices solve this problem prefectly. Since the environment is divided, any changes in code are separated to executables. Thanks to this, updates do not change the rest of the application, which is what clients are initially concerned about.

API

One of the indisputable advantage of microservices which outweighs all traditional methods is the fact that they communicate by means of API. With that said, you can release new features step by step with a new API version simultaneously. And if any failures appear, there is also a possibility to shut off access to the new API while the previous version of your app is still operational. In the meantime, you can work on the new function.

DevOps

At Grape Up, we often work on on-site projects alongside our clients. On the first day of the project, we are introduced to multiple groups that are in charge of various parts of the app’s lifecycle such as operations, deployment, QA or development. Each of them has its own processes. This creates long gaps between tasks being handed over from one group to another. Such gaps result in ridiculously long deployment time frames which are very harmful to an IT business, especially when frequent releases are more than welcome. To efficiently get rid of these obstacles and improve the whole process, we introduce clients to DevOps.

By and large, DevOps is nothing else, but an attempt to eliminate the gaps between IT groups. It’s an engineering culture that Grape Up experts teach clients to use. If followed properly, they are able to transform manual processes to automated ones and start getting things done faster and better. The most important thing is to find the pain point in the application’s lifecycle. Let’s say that the QA department doesn’t have enough resources to test software and delays the entire process in time. A solution to this can be either to migrate testing to a cloud-based environment or put developers in charge of creating tests that analyze the code. By doing so, the QA stage can take place simultaneously with the development stage, not after it. And this is what it takes to understand DevOps.

The transition to cloud-native software development is no longer an option, it is a necessity. We hope that all the reasons mentioned above prompted you to embark on a journey called “Cloud-Native”, a promising opportunity for your company to grow in the years to come. And even if you’re still feeling hesitant, don’t think twice. Our expertise combined with your vision can be a great start into a brighter future for your enterprise.