What is a cloud-native application?

A cloud-native application is defined as one that is specifically designed to operate in a cloud environment, leveraging the unique benefits that cloud infrastructure provides, such as scalability, resilience, and flexibility. These applications are typically built using microservices architecture, which allows them to be more modular and easier to update, scale, and deploy. By utilizing cloud capabilities, such as automated resource management and dynamic scaling, cloud-native applications can respond effectively to changing demands and ensure high availability without the constraints that traditional applications face.

The focus on scalability in the cloud-native approach means that as demand increases, the application can automatically utilize additional resources without manual intervention. Resilience comes from the ability to design these applications in a way that they recover quickly from failures, often deploying across multiple regions to provide redundancy.

Traditional applications, on the other hand, may require significant reworking to adapt to cloud environments but lack the inherent capabilities of being cloud-native. Any application that requires a physical server or is constrained to local environments cannot fully harness the advantages provided by cloud infrastructure and is therefore not classified as cloud-native.