Why you need to be a cloud-native enterprise

What do Net­flix, Spo­ti­fy, Uber and Ama­zon all have in com­mon? They are all cloud-native com­pa­nies.

For com­par­i­son, we could pro­vide a list of com­pa­nies in each of these sec­tors that are not cloud native, but it is unlike­ly you’ll have heard of them.

Cloud-native com­pa­nies are becom­ing dom­i­nant. In the future, many suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies will be built on cloud-native prin­ci­ples.

In this arti­cle we want to explain why cloud-native think­ing is so pow­er­ful and why your own organ­i­sa­tion should reengi­neer along cloud-native lines.

What is cloud native?

First, a def­i­n­i­tion. In a nut­shell, cloud native means a com­pa­ny is built on tech­nolo­gies that har­ness the unique prop­er­ties of the cloud. But it is also about com­pa­ny cul­ture. The cloud allows enter­pris­es to play and exper­i­ment, and for teams to test their the­o­ries quick­ly with low­er costs and over­heads. Cloud-native com­pa­nies build their strat­e­gy around the agili­ty the cloud offers.

One of the key ben­e­fits is known as elas­tic scal­ing. Cloud hosts such as Ama­zon Web Ser­vices offer almost infi­nite data stor­age and pro­cess­ing. And cloud-native soft­ware is built to expand and con­tract like a con­certi­na. This means that, for exam­ple, a cloud-native retail com­pa­ny that expe­ri­ences a sales spike on Black Fri­day will be able to expand its ser­vice to run on more servers so no sales are lost. It can then reduce that back down as traf­fic falls to low­er costs.

Cloud-native soft­ware is also updat­ed in real time and there is no need to go offline to imple­ment a code change. A ‘blue/green’ deploy­ment means a new ver­sion (green) is spun-up in par­al­lel to the exist­ing ver­sion (blue) and acti­vat­ed in a mil­lisec­ond. If it works, this ver­sion stays live, but if there’s a glitch it can revert to the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. Ama­zon updates its code base in this way every 11 sec­onds, on aver­age, with zero down­time. This means it can alter the shad­ing on a but­ton, intro­duce a new fea­ture or tweak the lay­out when­ev­er need­ed with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion for its users.

Using cloud-native soft­ware also gives teams con­trol over their fief­dom. Tra­di­tion­al soft­ware is mono­lith­ic – one big lump of code — but cloud native breaks soft­ware into autonomous chunks called microser­vices. Each chunk runs inde­pen­dent­ly and com­mu­ni­cates with oth­ers to cre­ate a func­tion­al whole. This means teams can work autonomous­ly on their ser­vice at their own speed. A bank, for exam­ple, can run the cash machine net­work inde­pen­dent­ly to the mort­gage oper­a­tion. Both teams update their code­base as and when they wish. The idea that a cash machine team and mort­gage team need to sync their updates is obso­lete. Inno­va­tion runs much faster as a result.

The power of cloud native

Cloud-native com­pa­nies are free to exper­i­ment and soft­ware updates can be done or undone quick­ly. Net­flix is a mas­ter of test­ing the­o­ries, reg­u­lar­ly tweak­ing its user inter­face to test what works. Should a but­ton be big­ger or small­er? Should trail­ers auto-play? Should the logo sit top right or top left of the screen? The team is free to play around. Suc­cess­ful changes are built on, while mis­takes are dis­card­ed. It’s an iter­a­tive approach, with new ideas test­ed every day.

Com­pare this to the tra­di­tion­al approach where com­pa­nies launch ‘big bang’ ver­sion upgrades every six months or so. This means mul­ti­ple changes are acti­vat­ed at the same moment and bugs are a night­mare to spot – which one of the changes is caus­ing the glitch? Mis­takes are also retained until the next ver­sion upgrade. Cre­ativ­i­ty is all too often dis­cour­aged because it’s seen as too time-con­sum­ing and trou­ble­some.

With cloud native, prod­uct teams are empow­ered. Take microser­vices. Sud­den­ly prod­uct teams have direct con­trol over their domain and code changes can be autho­rised by each team, reduc­ing the need for com­pa­ny-wide coor­di­na­tion. When teams know they can con­ceive an idea and imple­ment it with min­i­mal out­side inter­fer­ence it’s amaz­ing how
cre­ativ­i­ty soars.

Anoth­er ben­e­fit is that the cost of fail­ure is reduced to near zero and risk can be active­ly man­aged. A new idea can be intro­duced with ease, then retained or revoked. A great exam­ple is Spo­ti­fy. It runs an exper­i­men­ta­tion plat­form to man­age the con­stant test­ing of hypothe­ses. The user inter­face team recent­ly tried a raft of new fea­tures, includ­ing pro­vid­ing lyrics with songs and chang­ing how pod­casts are pre­sent­ed. If an idea does­n’t work, who cares? Fail­ure is part of the learn­ing expe­ri­ence — nec­es­sary and encour­aged.

Work­ing with third-par­ties is rev­o­lu­tionised with cloud-native soft­ware, com­pa­nies only need to plug-in a new ser­vice via an API. In bank­ing, for exam­ple, fraud detec­tion ser­vice Feedzai sim­ply con­nects banks via a cloud API, with no soft­ware upgrades or main­te­nance. They encour­age banks to try out Feedzai to see if it deliv­ers results. Once again, exper­i­men­ta­tion is a key part of the phi­los­o­phy.

Cloud native is thus a way of think­ing — an ethos — more than a set of tech­nolo­gies. You can play, you can exper­i­ment. Cre­ativ­i­ty is unlocked. And teams are free to exe­cute their own ideas.

Transitioning to cloud native

Con­vinced? We hope so. At Cloudreach we help enter­pris­es of all sizes to re-invent them­selves as cloud native. Above all, we help them see the poten­tial. Our research, con­duct­ed with IDC, reveals that one in three already see the cloud as “essen­tial for future sur­vival” and “foun­da­tion­al for inno­va­tion”. Momen­tum is build­ing.

Our advice is to be bold. One client said they were wor­ried about dis­rup­tion. We explained con­struc­tive dis­rup­tion is part of the process. The tran­si­tion to cloud native is a chance to rethink the entire enter­prise. Don’t waste it.

Har­ness the ener­gy of your peo­ple. Train your staff. Help them under­stand the poten­tial of cloud-native ideas. Get them excit­ed, not just nod­ding along. Empow­er them. Give them the author­i­ty to solve prob­lems and they’ll do so.

If you do need to hire staff, being cloud native makes recruit­ment eas­i­er. Tal­ent­ed pro­fes­sion­als want to work with the lat­est tools. Being cloud native means an engi­neer from Ama­zon or Spo­ti­fy can walk into your office and be famil­iar with the cul­ture.

Migra­tion has nev­er been eas­i­er. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are greater than ever.

The com­pa­nies of the future will be cloud native. We rec­om­mend you join them.

To explore what cloud native means for your enter­prise, vis­it Cloudreach.com. If you want to learn more, lis­ten to our Cloud­bust­ing pod­cast, where we dis­cuss what it means to live, work and solve busi­ness chal­lenges as a cloud-native organ­i­sa­tion. Avail­able on all major pod­cast plat­forms includ­ing iTunes, Spo­ti­fy and Ama­zon Music.

Pro­mot­ed by Cloudreach