What Is Cloud Native And Why It Matters

There are many different ways to be “in the cloud” these days. Being in the cloud might mean you are using a cloud-based application or it could mean you are simply hosting a legacy application in the cloud. But in order to truly take advantage of everything the cloud has to offer, your software needs to be cloud-native. In this article, I’m going to explain what cloud-native is and the many benefits it offers.

Being cloud-native means your application or platform was built in the modern age. It isn’t merely hosted in the cloud and it is not just a single SaaS application that lives in the cloud, but rather a truly innovative product that utilizes the cloud to its fullest potential. There are many benefits to being cloud-native, all of which traditional software simply cannot match.

When most people talk about the benefits of the cloud, the first thing that comes to mind is its distributed architecture, which provides applications the flexibility to not only scale up and down to meet demand, but also to be replicated around the globe for speed and redundancy. Cost is also high on the list of benefits companies receive when compared to traditional deployments. But being cloud-native takes these concepts one step further.

I’ve written previously about the power of ecosystems, those unique places where the sum far exceeds the value of its parts. The cloud is one of those places. Innovations are happening in the cloud on a daily basis. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, is continually rolling out and improving dozens and dozens of cutting edge technologies. Those applications that are cloud-native can tap into these new services the moment they’re introduced. Those that aren’t, cant.

Qrvey has been cloud-native since our inception. That’s allowed us to build our platform in record time and innovate far faster than any other business analytic company. Cutting edge features like advanced analytics, machine learning, image recognition and speech-to-text are all made possible by the infrastructure the cloud provides. Our text analysis, for example, relies on Amazon Comprehend, while image analysis uses Amazon Rekognition. IBM Watson will soon be joined by AWS SageMaker for artificial intelligence functions and the coming AWS Textract will be quickly adopted for document processing. Even Qrvey’s hybrid cloud deployment model wouldn’t be possible without being 100% cloud native.

Every day, the cloud becomes better, faster and smarter. That’s why every day those who are cloud native do as well.