“Digital transformation” has been one of the biggest buzzwords of the last decade-- and has come to mean many things to many people. But the biggest manifestation that most workers have come to encounter has been the shift to the cloud. As more organizations move away from purchasing costly on-site servers and locally installed software, a new breed of IT infrastructure has sprung up termed cloud native.
But what does cloud native actually mean?
‘Cloud native’ refers to an IT environment where most of the organization’s applications and infrastructure are hosted and run in off-site third-party clouds, and are no longer locally installed on machines or on-premise software. In a cloud native organization, almost all of the business’ functions have shifted to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications for day-to-day operations, and cloud servers and containers for dev-ops, data processing, storage, and more.
There is some debate about whether cloud native refers only to startups that have never had an on-premises environment and, thus, were “born” natively in the cloud, or if it refers to any organization that now runs exclusively in the cloud. But as support for on-premises software and organization-level investment in CapEx-intensive hardware (like servers) winds down across organizations of all sizes and verticals, most organizations will be cloud native within the next few years.
There’s a few different layers to cloud native, and different ways that members of an organization interact with the cloud. Cloud native can refer to everything from applications like GSuite or Office 365 to virtual servers and container environments. Below, we’ll take a look at the different layers of cloud native environments.
The most familiar type of cloud native for most people is the productivity software they interact with everyday. Not too long ago, this software was purchased and installed as an app on your local machine, and all files were saved locally on the endpoint’s hard drive or shared to an on-premises server. But in a cloud native organization, that same software has shifted to the cloud. Most organizations now use SaaS apps with an organization-specific instance or managed through a subscription. These applications are accessed through a web browser, and files are stored in the cloud. This makes it easy for employees to work anywhere, theoretically from any machine, and makes sharing documents across the organization easy.
Back in the day, corporations ran on endless racks of servers. If they really had a lot of computing requirements, they, perhaps, invested in some “big iron” — massive mainframe computers housed in secure locations. The on-premises servers were used for developer environments, web app hosting, and a range of other applications. The issue for most companies, however, is that as the pace of innovation has accelerated, the ability of on-prem hardware and software to scale with the business quickly becomes a losing proposition. A far more sustainable solution is to shift operations to the cloud.
Containers are lightweight, executable packages of software that allow for code to run reliably between different operating environments. A container isolates software from its environment and ensures that it will always run the same, regardless of where it is running. Containers basically make working in the cloud possible, since it minimizes the resources needed to run applications, and allows for flexibility across Linux and Windows environments.
While technically part of the server infrastructure, the increasingly widespread use of Docker and Kubernetes in dev-ops means that they are an essential part of a cloud native environment.
There are plenty of advantages of transitioning to a cloud native infrastructure. Transitioning to the cloud makes sense for most organizations, since it lowers the capital investment they must make in technology, decreases demands on IT to implement and maintain software, and enhances collaboration between teams anywhere in the world.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world, and while the cloud offers plenty of benefits to organizations that make the switch, it can also create plenty of headaches for cybersecurity teams.
Most of the disadvantages of cloud native revolve around account access, managing security in the cloud, and vendor risk exposure.
What does cloud native mean? It means that the organization has taken a modern approach to business operations that shifts most of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, working through a handful of data and SaaS vendors. Whether it’s the user-layer infrastructure of productivity and communication software, or the deeper dev-ops and data management layer, in a cloud native organization, it has all shifted to the cloud. While the business benefits are many, cloud native infrastructure is not without its security challenges.