Elevating innovation: 7 Cloud-Native application trends reshaping businesses in 2023 and beyond

“Businesses worldwide mull over implementing robust Cloud-Native application development strategies to make the transition to the lift and shift culture, attain business efficiency at an unprecedented speed, and enable superior customer experiences.” 

Smart devices are permeating the world, and the soaring ‘anytime, anywhere’ culture puts the customers’ excitement on fire. Suppose technology advancements such as Internet-of-Everything (IoE) become the Enabler-of-Experiences (EoE) for customers. In that case, disruptive technology forces such as the Cloud help businesses catch up with the digital pace. Therefore, companies across industries are increasingly resorting resort to Cloud-Native application development services to reinvent their enterprise IT architecture.

In other words, Cloud-Native software development practices enable businesses to think beyond the on-premise boundaries, attain enterprise mobility, ensure 24*7 availability and accessibility, and increase connectivity and scalability.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Cloud-Native application architecture is critical to achieving complete business agility for all intents and purposes. Moreover, it drives business growth and helps adapt to the new normal.

The growth trends in Cloud-Native application development 

As internet usage proliferates, Cloud Computing comes to the forefront to help businesses disrupt the traditional IT delivery model. It enables the journey from physical to virtual, and third parties can deliver disparate software tools and enterprise IT resources over the internet. 

The demand for the Cloud Computing delivery model did gain traction even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the demand grew manifold in the pandemic's wake. According to a report, the global Cloud Computing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.5% annually till 2025. As a result, it will trigger the market value from $371.4 Billion in 2020 to $832.1 Billion in 2025. 

And being a robust way to deliver cost-optimized and secure apps at an unprecedented speed, Cloud-Native application development gains traction among businesses worldwide. IDC predicts that companies will broadly leverage Cloud-Native software development practices to develop and deploy over 500 Million digital apps and software services in the next two years.

Cloud-Native development practices are considered the best for maximizing the benefits of the Cloud Computing delivery model. And in the post-pandemic years, a surge in demand for Cloud-native application development across the geographies is anticipated. According to a recent report, from 2021 to 2027, the need for Cloud-native application development services will grow at the highest CAGR in the Asia-Pacific region. However, North America is expected to hold first place in the total market share, and Europe is anticipated to drive second place. 

Cloud-Native application practices enable businesses across industries, including banking, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and more, to fill the gap created by the pandemic and ensure business continuity in a secure, efficient, and cost-effective manner.  

Top 7 tech trends in Cloud-Native application development 

Things in a world driven by digital technologies tend to change continuously, and that too at a breakneck speed. Be it customers’ demands, technology trends, or how businesses carry out their functions. The Cloud-Native application development approach enables companies to cope with the continuously changing business environment. So, let’s see some emerging tech trends that make Cloud-Native application architecture robust and business-friendly, especially in the modern environment. 

1. Serverless Computing

Containerization indeed enables simplification of an app’s lifecycle in a Cloud-Native Environment. However, with the development of serverless computing, containerization needs to coexist. The benefits that serverless computing brings along make it worth considering.

Whether scaling, provisioning, patching, or scheduling, serverless computing allows companies to offload their complexities if they handle or maintain infrastructure. Computing resources are available on-demand, and companies only need to pay for the services and tools from Cloud providers.

Serverless computing, thus, essentially is an essential component of Cloud-Native application development services and enables developers to focus entirely on building, optimizing, and operating Cloud-Native applications most efficiently and cost-effectively.

2. Kubernetes and Containerization

A container-orchestration system, Kubernetes or K8s, essentially helps developers deploy, scale, and manage Cloud-native applications without hassles. Moreover, containerization enables simplification of Cloud-Native apps’ lifecycle. In other words, when a software application is deployed in a different computing environment, it moves with all its dependencies, including the files required for configuring, libraries, and more. 

Following a CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) approach, Kubernetes and container-based apps ensure your Cloud-Native applications are up and running with the utmost efficiency.

Right from rolling out configuration changes to deploying the storage system of your choice and balancing the workloads, Kubernetes automates functions. It offers companies an intuitive UI (User Interface) that supports scaling up and down their applications as needed and without adding up to the DevOps teams.

Besides supporting superfast development and deployment efficiently, Kubernetes offers alerts and notifications and supports self-healing if a container fails to perform its scheduled tasks. Companies can rely on Kubernetes to integrate with external systems and add additional features to the Kubernetes clusters without tempering the source code. Moreover, the open-source system helps Cloud-Native applications comply with internal and external functioning protocols and regulations. 

3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has also emerged as one of the most noticeable Cloud application development trends that enhance the capabilities of Cloud-Native applications. It enables IT infrastructure provisioning automation, therefore reducing developers’ workload. Performing tasks manually while developing, testing, and deploying Cloud-Native applications, developers have to focus on coding and performing repeated IT provisioning. 

These factors lead to increased costs and risks. Whereas IaC — a DevOps approach — makes things seamless for developers. Developers can use IaC to accelerate the end-to-end software delivery lifecycle. IaC helps them rapidly develop and deploy Cloud-Native applications and governs the management of application environments.

Enabling greater agility and scalability while deploying applications in the Cloud, IaC significantly helps reduce development costs, mitigate risks, and fasten time-to-market.

4. Edge Computing

Edge computing is about extending Cloud-computing capabilities to unlock opportunities and add enhanced mobility to the Cloud. Cloud-Native edge solutions allow businesses to make the flexible nature of containerized applications work for them. The solutions offer the same operational consistency, scalability, and performance that the Multi-Cloud Environment (public, private, and hybrid) offers. 

Aligning Cloud-Native principles with edge computing means taking the cloud, loosely coupled applications, and the benefits underlying to the activity area or at the data center. It helps create interoperable platforms, enabling DevOps teams to perform application development and deployment remotely at an unprecedented speed and innovate at scale.

5. DevSecOps

Security tests amidst the development processes in a Cloud-Native architecture can be complex and lengthier most of the time. Ultimately, it results in security gaps and can lead to breaches. Therefore, the approach to DevSecOps enables developers to bridge the gap between code and product security in the Cloud. 

DevSecOps is about merging the security aspects with the DevOps practices, which helps follow a preventive approach and fix misconfigurations faster. The system allows developers to integrate security while developing Cloud-Native applications using advanced technologies, including AI and ML. 

Furthermore, with the DevSecOps approach, developers can automate tests concerning products' security in the Cloud and pursue Cloud-Native application development in a serverless environment to mitigate risks and ensure faster deployment cycles. 

6. Service Mesh with Microservices

The need to modernize Cloud-Native application development and make the development cycle agile and scalable drives the demand for microservices. Undoubtedly, a microservices architecture simplifies product development and makes services independent. However, too many microservices can again lead to complexities.
  
Service mesh helps DevOps Teams reduce dependency, enabling them to focus on developing, deploying, and managing applications. According to a survey, 27% of businesses use service mesh with microservices while pursuing Cloud-Native application development. Offerings consisting of service mesh work as core building blocks for applications developed in the cloud and for the Cloud. 

Service mesh harnesses API capabilities to facilitate communication and configuration between services. It uses a proxy to enable seamless relationships between services in a microservices architecture. Service mesh is an important trend in Cloud-Native application development. It allows businesses to build efficient enterprise applications by decoupling them and allowing developers to work on specific features and functions that can help deal with particular challenges. 

7. Low-code/No-code (LCNC) platforms

The increased demand for applications has led to the emergence of low-code/no-code platforms. In 2021, the low-code platform market was valued at $7.61 billion. It's projected to reach $36.43 billion by 2027.  The rise in the popularity of these platforms is driven by a multitude of factors, such as the rise in the demand for IT applications and the extremely user-friendly nature of these platforms that enable business users with low or almost zero coding knowledge to build applications that they need to automate or accelerate their work processes.

LNCP  technology is rapidly emerging as one of the most significant Cloud-Native application development trends as it accelerates the development and deployment of Cloud-Native applications. These platforms enable business users, and even seasoned developers, to design and develop applications through visual interfaces and pre-built components, streamlining the process and reducing the need for extensive coding. This aligns seamlessly with the cloud-native philosophy of rapid iteration and scalability, allowing teams to quickly respond to changing requirements and market demands.

Cloud-Native application practices allow businesses to operate and innovate at scale

Emerging technologies that support Cloud-Native applications play a critical role in helping businesses pursue innovation at scale. It enables them to live, function, and operate in the Cloud with reduced infrastructure complexities, costs, and dependency. Cloud-native practices allow companies to design, develop, and deploy software applications quickly, accurately, and flexibly. 

The Cloud-Native application development approach also makes it seamless and convenient for the developers to update the software as and when they want without disrupting the app's ongoing performance. As a result, businesses can leverage Cloud-Native application development platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud, and more, to eliminate the bottlenecks created by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Furthermore, it will also help rule the mobile-heavy market, where customers love to buy anywhere, anytime, and across the devices.  

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