Cloud-Native Applications and Cloud-Ready Applications - What is that?!

Hello Everyone. We often hear the terms "cloud-native", "cloud-ready" etc., from Application Developers, Solution Architects, Business Analysts, Sales and all over the IT world.

Are these tech words just technical jargons used to sugarcoat the talk?

I don't think so. Cloud-Native and Cloud-Ready applications represent two different architectural approaches used in developing a software application and deployed in cloud infrastructure.

What does a Cloud-Native Application mean?

A Cloud-Native application means the application and its complete lifecycle is designed keeping the cloud technologies and services as the backbone. For example, A cloud-native node.js application in AWS (Amazon Web Services) uses AWS S3 for the static file storage and AWS CloudFront for CDN and uses AWS API Gateway for its API uses and AWS Lambda for its certain use-cases. It can use AWS CodeCommit for its repository and AWS CodeDeploy for deployment purposes. And for accessing the application and monitoring, it uses AWS Route 53 for DNS and routing purpose and AWS Cloudwatch for monitoring the Application. For scaling the application based on demand, the application can use Auto-Scaling groups and ELBs (Elastic Load Balancers).

Typically a developer focussing in all these stuff manually and maintaining all these levels is a Herculean task. So, When the application is being designed and architected, the backend and supporting infrastructure will also be considered and the corresponding service will be used.

A cloud-native application is based on containers, microservices, and loosely coupled architecture.

So, a cloud-ready application will not have this stuff?

A cloud-ready application is an application which is designed and architected keeping the application and its features in consideration. For example, a cloud-ready application can be a three-tiered application with all the APIs, Authorisation, state management, caching are written inside the application itself and is ready to deploy in AWS with EC2 as web servers and application servers coupled with ELBs and AWS Route 53 as DNS routing mechanism and AWS RDS as a Database backend. Here the application is ready to get deployed in AWS, but it is not using the complete power of the cloud by using its own mechanisms in-built in the application logic.

We need to have a build and deployment strategy for having minimum downtimes during deployments and implement the strategies in the cloud, manually.

A cloud-native application is basically using most of the cloud infrastructure capabilities, it can be from any cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP, etc., and using its managed services and reducing our maintenance in all levels, whereas a cloud-ready application can be deployed into the cloud but also creating and maintaining the infrastructure which enables the application in cloud has to be considered as well.

A cloud-ready application is typically our legacy applications built and deployed on our own datacenters and managing those datacenters by ourselves. When our cloud-ready application is deployed in the cloud and harnesses its power of scalability, elasticity, and availability, it becomes a cloud-native application.

The performance and availability of a cloud-native application are greater compared to a cloud-ready application deployed on the on-premise datacenter.

So when we ask the developer or the architect the question, Is my application a cloud-native or cloud-ready, we now have a small idea of what kind of difference it brings in the architectural level and how it can work in scale.