What is Cloud Native? Understanding Cloud Native Architecture

What is cloud native?

Cloud native is a modern approach to building and running applications with a modular architecture that prioritizes development velocity, scalability, flexibility, and resilience. Cloud native architecture is well suited for dynamic cloud environments—whether public, private, or hybrid–which offer fungible compute and platform resources such as data services that can be used as building blocks. It leverages a combination of microservices, linux containers, and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes to create applications that are scalable, resilient, and agile. This architecture enables development teams to build, deploy, and update services independently and frequently, significantly accelerating innovation and responsiveness to evolving business needs.

What is a cloud native application?

A cloud native application is engineered to operate as a distributed system, optimized for dynamic cloud infrastructure. Rather than relying on static servers or tightly coupled components, these applications are designed to be modular, stateless where possible, and infrastructure-agnostic. They integrate deeply with cloud services—such as managed databases, messaging systems, and autoscaling groups—to achieve elasticity, fault tolerance, and operational efficiency. Cloud native applications prioritize automation, observability, and rapid deployment cycles, enabling teams to deliver features and fixes continuously while maintaining system reliability and performance at scale.

Cloud native vs cloud-enabled solutions

Sometimes the terms “cloud native” and “cloud-enabled” are mistakenly used interchangeably when they represent two very different concepts. 

Cloud-enabled typically means altered or retrofitted to operate in the cloud. For instance, cloud-enabled applications are applications that might have once resided on-premises but were then rearchitected or rebuilt for a cloud platform. Rearchitecting can be a lot of work and getting an on-premises application to work in the cloud will likely come with some challenges. At the very least, a rearchitected app won’t provide the inherent agility and flexibility of cloud native applications.

While cloud-enabled applications use a variety of cloud services, they typically still depend on some on-premises infrastructure to run in the cloud. 

Some of the major differences between cloud-enabled and cloud native applications include: 

• Original design – While cloud native apps are developed with cloud services and technologies in mind, cloud-enabled applications must be adapted to operate in the cloud. 

• Architecture – A distributed architecture that uses microservices is common in cloud native applications; cloud-enabled applications are built using a more traditional architecture.

• Resource utilization – Optimizing the usage of resources is an inherent part of cloud native applications, allowing for dynamic scaling and a high degree of flexibility. Cloud-enabled applications aren’t designed to take advantage of cloud resource optimization features. 

• Resilience – Part of being cloud native is leveraging reliability capabilities such as built-in redundancy and automatic failover. Cloud-enabled applications don’t typically include those capabilities unless they’re purposely built in during the rearchitecting phase. 

Cloud native application examples

The capabilities and benefits of cloud native applications make them ideal for situations where flexible deployment, high availability, and ultra-fast scalability are a must. Some of the components that enable that type of performance include: 

• Microservices architecture and continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) – By creating an application as a collection of small, independent services, developers can update separate pieces of an application without affecting the rest of it. CI/CD enables rapid, frequent updates and bug fixes.

• Ultra-scalability – Cloud native applications can handle rapid fluctuations in demand and traffic because they can scale up or down quickly and easily. That’s a good capability to have in businesses such as retail, where online purchasing can hit massive demand peaks during certain times of the year.

The following are some examples of use cases that benefit significantly from cloud-native applications and capabilities:

• E-commerce platforms – Cloud native applications provide elastic scaling to accommodate massive fluctuations in traffic and user demand.

• Streaming media platforms – Whether music, movies, or gaming, these online platforms can go through various periods of high traffic and demand, and need to be able to deliver 24/7.

• Live chat platforms – Live chat traffic can also fluctuate greatly depending on a number of factors, and cloud native applications can assign server resources dynamically to keep everyone connected and talking.

• Digital banking – Microservices enable a range of banking functions and also enable quick software updates. Containers enhance online security, which is critical in this industry.

• Medical imaging and data analytics platform – Cloud native technologies ensure resilience and scalability to enable fast data processing and analytics for better patient outcomes.

• Property rental platforms – Large platforms such as AirBnB or VRBO use cloud native applications to deliver dynamic scaling for millions of listings. Containers and microservices keep the platform reliable and available.

• Real-time data analytics – Any system that provides real-time analytics requires an architecture that can keep up with enormous volumes of data from a range of sources. The distributed nature of cloud native applications is made for this.

• Customized consumer recommendations – Cloud native applications use microservices to process and analyze consumer behavior and preferences so they can offer up personalized product or service recommendations.

• Automated “smart home” systems – Cloud native applications use a variety of APIs to automatically manage connected appliances and allow users to interface and input commands.

• Location-enabled services integration – An application such as Google Maps uses APIs to allow application developers to integrate tried-and-proven mapping capabilities into their new products.

Cloud native application architecture characteristics

Traditional applications were designed to run as a single instance with all functionality required, which could be deployed to larger and more powerful servers to handle increasing demand. They were also typically created for a specific platform or operating system. Improving or updating these apps was difficult and time-consuming.

Cloud native applications, on the other hand, are modular. They’re built with microservices which helps them to be much more flexible, scalable, and resilient than legacy apps. They all typically include the following components:

Microservices

Instead of building all of an application’s functionality into a single service, cloud native apps are built with  microservices. Developers break up an application into discrete packages of code, each of which focuses on a single, specific business capability. Loosely coupled, they work collectively to create the full application and its services. Microservices are packed into containers and communicate with other microservices as needed using application programming interfaces (APIs).

Containers

These are lightweight, isolated runtime environments that contain an individual microservice along with its system tools, libraries, and other dependencies. Because containerized microservices can operate independently of any underlying hardware or operating system—as well as other containerized microservices—they can be deployed in almost any environment and don’t interfere with other microservices.

APIs

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are standardized protocols that enable pieces of software to communicate with each other. APIs are what allow each containerized microservice to communicate with each other or with other services that make up the application. They can be considered the glue that connects microservices together. In a cloud native application, an API between two microservices will communicate what each microservice wants and the data it can give the other.

Orchestration

Containerized microservices and APIs are all managed dynamically via orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes.  These orchestration tools can manage the often-complex lifecycles of cloud native applications, as well as optimize the allocation of resources, balance loads as needed, restart a container if it experiences a failure, scale out an application as load increases, and deploy and provision containerized microservices onto servers.

What are the benefits of adopting a cloud native approach?

• Increased scalability – Scalability is greatly simplified with cloud native workloads because each microservice is isolated, enabling them to scale independently. The architecture allows operators to update different application components individually and makes resource allocation more efficient while avoiding under- or over-provisioning.
• Enhanced resilience – Isolating microservices means that if one fails, it won’t affect other relevant microservices. This can help reduce the risk of downtime and ensure that an application stays up and running. Additionally, some container solutions such as Kubernetes come with features that can self-heal some faults and automatically recover to maintain high resilience.
• Greater efficiency - Cloud native application development enables organizations to adopt a DevOps approach, which includes continuous integration and continuous delivery (CD). Cloud native development also leverages a range of cloud services and automated tools to accelerate and streamline the way developers build applications.
• Portability across different infrastructures – Containers allow organizations to avoid vendor lock-in and make it easy to move applications where they’re needed, regardless of cloud platform or provider. This portability is especially beneficial for the increasingly popular hybrid multicloud infrastructure. Some organizations even distribute an application across multiple providers for increased flexibility and stability.
• Easier deployment and management – Cloud native applications make good use of automation to deploy specific application features or update apps. Developers can also use automation to enable CI/CD and improve applications without disrupting the ongoing user experience.
• Reduced costs – Because development, testing, and application hosting take place in the cloud, there’s no need to purchase (or manage and maintain) additional hardware, which can come with the risk and cost of overprovisioning. Cloud deployments are typically pay-as-you-use so organizations can get the resources they need in the moment. Simpler development, deployment, and management of applications can also help organizations save on developer and IT costs and effort, while providing those employees more time to focus on more critical projects.
• Increased availability – IT can update cloud native applications without causing any downtime, to keep services available whenever they’re needed. Also, it’s simple to spin up new application resources at a moment’s notice in the cloud, so operations stay consistently available even when demand spikes rapidly, such as during peak online shopping seasons.
• Improved agility and productivity – Cloud native applications allow for a range of deployment options, so organizations can deploy them how and where they want. The modular nature of cloud native apps also enables fast and flexible development, testing, and deployment of new features. When DevOps teams use a cloud native approach to applications, they simplify the development process; troubleshoot and iterate faster and more efficiently; and speed up time to market, which helps organizations respond more effectively to shifting trends and customer demands.

Designing, migrating, and deploying cloud native applications

Cloud native application development is the modern approach to building scalable, flexible, resilient applications. For organizations migrating from on-premises environments or designing new workloads in the cloud, the following practices can simplify the process and reduce risk.

Planning and preparation

Application migration can be a challenge, especially when moving an app from an on-premises environment to the cloud. However, you can make it easier and more seamless with some planning and preparation.

The planning phase includes the following actions:

• Portfolio evaluation – Assess your organization’s current applications to determine which ones are best suited to cloud migration. Relevant criteria should include the business value of moving the application, how complex it will be, and whether it’s technically feasible.
  

• Assessment of changes needed – Note which applications will need to be redesigned, refactored, or reauthored, and in what ways. This will typically entail identifying how to break apps down into microservices, implement containers, and so on.
  

• Cloud provider engagement – Decide which cloud provider you’ll use to migrate your applications. Important factors in this selection include level of support, pricing, services provided, and compliance.

Architecture and tooling

Once planning has been completed, it’s time to actually migrate or build applications with the right tools:

• Breaking into microservices and containerizing them – Applications are decomposed into microservices and packaged into containers with all dependencies included, ensuring portability and consistency across environments.
  

• Implementing  orchestration with Kubernetes – A container orchestration platform such as Kubernetes manages deployment, scaling, and lifecycle operations. It automates resource allocation and ensures applications remain resilient.
  

• Preparing the destination server architecture – The cloud environment must be configured for speed, bandwidth, redundancy, and security requirements to handle workloads effectively.
  

• Microservices and lightweight containers – Microservices and containers simplify development and operations, making it easier to manage, update, and improve applications over time.
  

• Choose tools that enhance efficiency – The technology stack should align with the application’s requirements. Some solutions are best suited for data processing, while others may work better for microservice creation and management.

Deployment and best practices

Whether migrating existing applications or deploying new ones, best practices ensure long-term resilience:

• CI/CD for better productivity – Continuous integration ensures developers always work with the latest code, while continuous delivery automates deployment to production. This improves communication, reduces bugs, and accelerates time to market.
  

• Immutable infrastructure with IaC – Infrastructure as code automates and standardizes resource management, ensuring predictable and stable deployments. IaC boosts safety and efficiency by creating new instances instead of modifying existing ones.
  

• Serverless to eliminate management overhead – Going serverless removes the need to manage servers directly. Developers only pay for resources consumed, scaling is fast, and compliance/security features are often built in.
  

• Security as a priority – Integrate access control, encryption, network security, and intrusion detection throughout development. A “shift-left” security approach ensures resilience from the start.
  

• Observability to detect issues quickly – Gather logs, metrics, and traces across applications and infrastructure to diagnose failures or vulnerabilities in real time.
  

• Service meshes for optimized communication – Service meshes simplify inter-service communication, letting developers focus on building features rather than managing complex networking details.

Validation and monitoring

• Testing in cloud native environments – Deploy and comprehensively test critical components before production migration.
  

• Data migration – Move application data into cloud storage while maintaining integrity and consistency, and reconfigure applications to run correctly in the new environment.
  

• Ongoing monitoring – Once deployed, monitor performance, scalability, and resource allocation continuously. Stay aware that problems can arise in any stage, and it can take several weeks to feel confident that an application is stable in its new cloud-based environment.

How does cloud native support DevOps practices and continuous delivery?

Cloud computing enabled the era of DevOps, which is essentially a partnership between IT operations (Ops) and software development (Dev) teams. It focuses on integration of processes as well as collaboration and effective communication. The ability to scale in the cloud and easily, seamlessly provision resources on demand made DevOps possible, an approach that values fast, efficient application development, testing, and deployment with many small iterations along the way.

When organizations take on a cloud native approach to applications and computing, they also enable the benefits of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), which help lead to applications that are extremely resilient, observable, scalable, and manageable.

While cloud computing paved the way for DevOps, DevOps also in turn helped the cloud evolve, through a high degree of automation and  increased collaboration between software development and IT operations. DevOps practices are able to flourish in the cloud and cloud native application development is fast becoming imperative for any organization that wants to stay competitive in today’s fierce marketplace.

Going cloud native? Nutanix can help

Nutanix understands the modern infrastructure challenges that today’s organizations face—and has developed solutions to ease those difficulties and help your business thrive. We offer hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and hybrid multicloud solutions that can make it simple to both build and deploy new apps in the cloud and migrate existing applications to the cloud.

With Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP™), you can speed time to market and innovate more quickly with easy container management across hybrid, multicloud, and on-premises environments. Add in Nutanix Data Services for Kubernetes (NDK™) and you get a range of advanced data services designed specifically for cloud-native environments. Using the two solutions together, you can:

• Develop applications faster

• Simplify development, testing, and deployment with automation

• Get instant platform engineering with APIs and GitOps workflows

• Gain deep insight into all clusters and environments from a single pane of glass

• Enjoy enterprise-class security features built in and designed to meet strict security standards

• Control cloud-native apps at the application layer

• Simplify and unify provisioning and operation of cloud-native apps

• And much more