How to Build a Cloud-Native Platform for Each Workload
In an IT landscape where business leaders must manage countless applications and find ways to seamlessly deliver those apps to consumers, there is a need for a solution that allows any app to run anywhere. As cloud platforms continue to evolve, cloud-native approaches are becoming the preferred foundation for building and operating modern applications across diverse workloads.
Nutanix is the perfect platform for organizations with both cloud-native and legacy applications as well as organizations with diverse teams each using different Kubernetes platforms. The Nutanix platform offers a common control plane and a common infrastructure that can cater to all these different demands.
Key Takeaways:
- For many businesses, the decision to shift to cloud-native practices is a necessity for ensuring that applications and data can run anywhere.
- Building a platform that fully supports cloud-native requires a foundational infrastructure that can offer inbuilt data services for Kubernetes to the fullest.
- Nutanix is a perfect cloud platform due to its ability to accommodate the consumer’s existing as well as modern app environments and leverage hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) for future-proof application development.
Read on to learn about the process of building a platform with cloud-native practices in mind for each workload and how Nutanix presents a solution that stands apart from the competition.
Step 1: Understand What a Cloud-Native Platform is
What is a cloud native platform?
A cloud native platform is an IT platform that utilizes modern software abstraction technologies to enable efficient build, deployment, and management of workloads in the cloud. An IT platform, in general, is the hardware or software location where applications and workloads execute.
These future-proof platforms exist on architecture using containers and Kubernetes to build applications. Cloud-native applications themselves are packaged as containers and architectured as collections of microservices.
Cloud-native development adheres to a DevOps approach and results in deployment across elastic cloud infrastructure. When the applications in question have their foundation in containerization and microservices, software development itself facilitates a higher level of coordination between developers and operators. The result is a streamlined, accelerated process that benefits IT teams and consumers alike.
The Nutanix cloud-native platform features a simple control plane that includes the ability to manage components from other vendors, such as VMware. In the Nutanix ecosystem, users can easily manage entire hybrid multicloud environments from a single interface without any exposure to the complex moving parts underneath.
Identify which applications are cloud-native, containerized, or microservices-based, and document how your current IT platform handles them.
Step 2: Determine Why Cloud-Native Platforms are Needed for Each Workload
The most important reason to consider a shift to a cloud-native approach is the guarantee of flexibly running applications anywhere. Containerization allows applications to run at any location and in any cloud, as well as giving those applications the freedom to move between clouds in a hybrid multicloud environment.
Running cloud-native applications on the Nutanix platform standardizes the integration with public clouds from various hyperscalars and service providers, and brings the reality of running applications and workloads anywhere to a point that is ideal for the end user.
Nutanix layers a standardized infrastructure platform over every cloud and location such that the operator only needs to use a simple set of familiar tools to accomplish key tasks. It is not necessary to learn a proprietary method unique to each cloud vendor.
Cloud-native technologies also allow for the accelerated development of applications with robust software packaging, non-disruptive application upgrades, efficient scaling, and easy porting across multiple environments. That foundation also positions organizations to accelerate AI-driven workloads on cloud-native platforms, where container orchestration and intelligent storage combine to reduce manual operations and improve performance.
Mostcloud-native platforms today are built on some form of Kubernetes. Kubernetes as an infrastructure layer can be deployed on-premises or in the public cloud, providing a common operating model across environments.
Map your workloads to determine which applications benefit most from containerization, microservices, and Kubernetes deployment.
Step 3: Identify What Sets the Perfect Cloud-Native Platform Apart
The ideal cloud platform can meet the consumer wherever they are and accommodate their existing infrastructure. With Nutanix, the consumer has the choice of which Kubernetes distribution they want to use, whether that is a proprietary distribution or a different one altogether.
The cloud platform should also serve to extend the consumer’s existing platform. Organizations switching to a cloud-first mentality can still use their existing infrastructure by simply extending to the cloud with HCI-powered Kubernetes.
Kubernetes provides an infrastructure layer that IT teams can operate at scale in a programmatic, repeatable fashion. On the right platform, this utilization of Kubernetes is not limited by the demands of complex distributed systems.
Finally, a perfect cloud-native platform stands apart from the rest through its ability to facilitate enterprise data services directly within cloud-native applications. This includes cloud-native storage capabilities that let stateful workloads persist data reliably without breaking the portability and agility of containers.
The Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP), however, excels where VMware lacks in enabling a future-proof approach to cloud-native development.
Evaluate potential platforms based on flexibility, Kubernetes support, hybrid cloud integration, and built-in data services.
Step 4: Build the Cloud Native Platform for Each Workload
Now that you understand the requirements and options, it’s time to build the platform:
Inventory your workloads: Identify legacy, cloud-native, and containerized applications.
Select the infrastructure layer: Leverage Nutanix HCI to provide a unified, flexible foundation for all workloads.
Choose Kubernetes distributions: Determine which distribution fits each team or workload best.
Integrate enterprise data services: Ensure storage, databases, and other data services are accessible within the platform.
Standardize management tools: Use a single control plane to reduce complexity across multiple environments.
Deploy applications incrementally: Test workloads in the hybrid multicloud environment before full rollout.
Monitor and optimize: Continuously measure performance, scalability, and cost efficiency across workloads.
Step 5: Learn from Success Stories
Take a look at how Valmark used Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure and HCI to streamline IT operations and improve disaster recovery responsiveness. Real-world examples like this demonstrate how building a platform with cloud-native practices results in operational efficiency and future-proof flexibility.
Step 6: Choose the Right Platform for Your Business
Large, small, and mid-sized businesses across the globe choose the Nutanix platform as a solution for enabling their cloud-native applications to run anywhere without resistance. VMware as a cloud provider does not provide a consistent way to manage workloads across different locations and environments.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is the foundation for a hybrid multicloud platform powered by flexible and secure HCI technology that delivers applications and workloads to any cloud. With Nutanix HCI as the base of the entire cloud-native infrastructure stack, users gain both efficiency and simplicity in their IT tasks.
Nutanix is the best cloud-native platform for virtual machines (VM) and Kubernetes. Rather than pick another big-name cloud provider, enterprises can choose Nutanix for a consolidated, simplified, unified solution that bridges the gaps in a multi-platform or multi-location environment.
Adopt a unified cloud-native platform like Nutanix to consolidate workloads, standardize operations, and ensure applications run anywhere.
Step 7: Expand Your Knowledge
As cloud-native foundations mature, the next imperative is integrating AI to make those environments self-optimizing: predicting capacity demands, automating resource placement, and enforcing governance without manual intervention. Organizations that unify Kubernetes orchestration with AI-driven storage capabilities eliminate the operational overhead that slows innovation and position their infrastructure to handle the scale that modern workloads demand. To understand how to put this into practice, read How to Accelerate Intelligent Workloads with AI in Cloud Native.
Platform selection remains the strategic decision that determines whether those capabilities can be realized consistently across core, edge, and cloud without sacrificing control, performance, or cost efficiency. For IT leaders working through that evaluation, Nutanix experts break down the essential questions to ask in the on-demand webinar Finding the Right Platform for Modern Workloads.
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