Definition: Cloud-Native

What is cloud-native?

Cloud-native is an approach to software development and deployment that is designed to take full advantage of cloud computing resources and capabilities.

A cloud-native application is designed to run natively on cloud infrastructure, which allows for improved scalability, resilience, and flexibility. This is achieved by leveraging containerization, microservice architecture, and continuous delivery.

• Containerization involves packaging an application and its dependencies into a container that can be run consistently across different environments. This provides a standardized environment for the application to run in, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.
• Microservices architecture is an approach to building applications that involves breaking them down into smaller, modular services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. This allows for greater flexibility and easier maintenance, as changes to one service do not affect the entire application.
• Continuous delivery is a software development practice that involves automating the build, testing, and deployment of applications. This ensures that changes to the application can be quickly and reliably deployed to production, enabling faster time-to-market and improved agility.
  

Cloud-native is part of the MACH architecture, which stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless.