Cloud-Native software development breaks away from the traditional model of building monolithic software applications and focuses instead on creating applications that leverage cloud environments. These applications are built independent from any underlying architecture and are engineered to benefit from a cloud-native architecture.
Within each cloud application are four underlying pillars: Microservices, Containers, Dynamic Orchestration, and Continuous Delivery.
Microservices
Microservices in cloud-native applications are services separated out to address a specific task. Since these services are loosely coupled with the underlying application, they can be updated or repaired without impacting other services.
This distinction allows microservices to be deployed and maintained more efficiently than traditional applications.
Containers
Just as virtual machines allow multiple operating systems to live on one machine, containers allow multiple apps to live on one virtual machine.
With containerization, applications are bundled with dependencies like libraries, configuration files, and binaries to expedite the process of deploying new applications and deploying updates to existing ones.
Dynamic Orchestration
Orchestration was introduced to the software development process to streamline the process of manually provisioning and configuring applications.
With DevOps time constrained by setting up new web servers, databases, and load balancers, orchestration creates efficiency by automating DevOps processes.
Continuous Delivery
Applications can easily be replicated to create a more efficient deployment workflow. While code can be updated through a code repository, the environment and configuration can just as easily be re-created by cloning existing applications and publishing them as needed.
From here, developers can use their individual workstations to write code, push to staging/development servers, and then ultimately have the code from development pushed to production.
