Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Cloud-Native

Cloud-based technologies already benefit organizations and end users in countless ways. We couldn’t use smartphones to purchase items online or play our favorite games without cloud apps. Cloud-native technology moves even more features to distributed systems. Now, we can develop entire software solutions in the cloud and distribute them to users.

Cloud-native tech doesn’t end with apps, though. A recent report from Gartner looks at emerging cloud-native products and services. According to the industry leader, we can expect to see more infrastructure move to the cloud. That’s just the beginning. As long as we have internet access, we can build practically anything in the cloud.

Insights on emerging Cloud-Native technologies

The “Emerging Tech Impact Radar” series presents some of the most useful insights from Gartner Research. Experts like Mark Driver, Lawrence Pingree, Elizabeth Kim, Bill Ray, Ed Anderson, and Adam Gavish share their opinions in these research publications.

In “Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Cloud-Native,” Gartner states that:

The cloud-native concept is revolutionizing not only application architectures and platforms but also operations, security, and the developer experience. Product leaders must understand the impact of these new technologies and trends to seize opportunities that come after market disruptions.

Key takeaways from Gartner's report

1. Impact on Infrastructure: Companies need continued growth in cloud-native architecture and platforms to meet evolving demands.
2. Future Trends: Expect more infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platforms-as-a-service (PaaS) to become as common as software-as-a-service (SaaS).
3. Security Concerns: Organizations can combat cybersecurity threats by making security a task common to all IT teams through site reliability engineering (SRE) and automation.

Importance of Cloud-Native Infrastructure for SaaS 

Cloud-native applications have become the new normal. A survey from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and The Linux Foundation shows that about 79% of organizations use containers for their production applications. Nearly half of these organizations release new code daily, enabling end users to access the latest features seamlessly.

Pivoting from on-site servers to cloud-hosted containers makes sense in a world focused on mobile access and frequent app updates. Nearly half of the organizations that use containers release new code daily. Hosting applications on servers makes it possible for end users to access the latest features seamlessly without downloading new files.

Increased reliance on cloud-native apps creates a new challenge, though. Once you start developing most of your applications in the cloud, you need a cloud-native infrastructure that can adapt to changing needs. If the infrastructure can’t scale, it can’t support the applications businesses and end users rely on.

Moving infrastructure to the cloud is the obvious solution. Within a few years, you will likely see infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS) become as common as SaaS. It’s an inevitable result of shorter app life cycles and higher usage.

Tackling security in Cloud-Native environments

Given the growing importance of cloud-native technologies, why haven’t all organizations moved to hybrid cloud strategies? About 40% say security concerns prevent them from adopting cloud-native apps and infrastructure as much as they’d prefer.

Cybersecurity is a legitimate concern given that the number of security incidents in the U.S. alone jumped from 1,808 in 2022 to 3,200 in 2023.

Organizations can combat cybersecurity threats by making security an essential task common to all IT teams. Traditionally, data protection tasks have been assigned to security specialists. A better approach involves an “all hands on deck” approach that embraces site reliability engineering (SRE), automation, and building security directly into every level of development.

Security teams can still play critical roles, but you need a responsibility model that includes aspects of systems engineering, operations, development, and artificial intelligence that takes data-driven responses to potential attacks.

Improving the developer’s experience

Adapting to cloud-native ecosystems presents some challenges. The technology trend also creates exceptional opportunities that can lead to improved experiences for developers as well as end users.

Sophisticated automation becomes much easier when you move to a cloud-native environment that doesn’t rely on each company to own expensive tools. Developers can benefit from diverse automation testing that checks integrations, functionality, and performance.

Developers won’t need to spend nearly as much time on mundane tasks like testing older code components as they release updates. Automation can handle those jobs, making it possible for developers to devote more time and energy to creative problem-solving.

We already see examples of how automation helps developers reach their goals. For instance, integrated development environments (IDEs) like Microsoft Visual Studio and PyCharm can handle small details that humans often miss. Instead of wasting minutes searching lines of code for a missing element, IDEs either add or highlight missing elements in real time, letting programmers avoid mistakes that could lead to bigger problems further along the development cycle.

Expand these simple automation to a much larger environment, and it’s easy to see why so many companies want to adopt cloud-native technologies that make employees more productive and accurate.

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The timeline of emerging cloud technologies

Organizations need to review their current technologies and determine whether they have the right assets to thrive in a cloud-native world. Falling behind could mean that competitors gain an advantage.

Gartner says that cloud-native technologies currently used by many businesses include API mediation, container management, and DevSecOps. Within the next few years, we expect to see more organizations adopt a cloud-native architecture that scales with application use. Serverless PaaS, event stream processing, and immutable infrastructure will also become more common within a few years.

As computer technology continues to move to the cloud, we will likely see even more cloud-native products and services available by the decade’s end. Look for increased reliability on a distributed cloud, GitOps, container-native storage, policy as code, site reliability engineering as a service, observability, and event-driven architecture.

Conclusion

Falling behind in cloud-native technologies could allow competitors to gain an advantage. We can help you choose the cloud-native assets that fit your evolving tech stack. Contact us and learn more about how emerging technologies can benefit businesses of all sizes.