Integrating Cloud-Native Applications into Business Transformation Initiatives Emerges as New Executive Imperative

By Lane Cooper, Editorial Director, BizTechReports

Cloud-native application development has emerged as a central ingredient of technology modernization elements of business transformation across industries. According to analysts at IDC, enterprises that have implemented cloud-native application development strategies witnessed a marked increase in efficiency, scalability, and productivity, as well as improved user experience.

“The last few years have focused primarily on determining how best to move workloads from on-prem systems to the cloud. This has driven significant resources to be invested in application modernization. As organizations achieve a level of maturity in the migration and modernization efforts, however, a growing number of organizations are now allocating resources for cloud-native application development across hybrid, multi-cloud environments,” says Maria Schwenger, Partner, Cloud Native Build Leader, IBM Consulting in a podcast interview with BizTechReports.

Indeed, pressure to develop cloud-native applications is rapidly rising, with IDC research estimating that 40% of enterprise application portfolios are currently being hosted on the cloud today. Over the next five years, this percentage is expected to reach 50%. These trends raise compelling questions about how organizations can optimize the impact and efficacy of cloud-native initiatives to ensure alignment with business transformation objectives.

“It is a growing imperative for enterprise technology executives as the number of projects executed without the burden of legacy technology debt rises. New application development initiatives in cloud-native environments are playing a bigger role in supporting innovative end-user experiences and analytical capabilities,” explains Aparna Sharma, Managing Partner, Hybrid Cloud Transformation, IBM Consulting.

“This is increasingly appreciated by business and technology leaders as an opportunity to establish differentiation and competitive advantage -- especially in industries that have struggled to shed generations of legacy technologies that are very rigid, expensive to maintain and/or difficult to manage,” she adds.

Cloud-native application development, she adds, is less about the location and destination of workloads than it is a conceptual framework for rapid development and process enablement.

“Whether you are developing applications for modernized on-prem systems or public-cloud environments, cloud-native refers to enabling applications that are built and run to take advantage of the distributed computing properties enabled by the cloud delivery model. It defines how software applications can be designed and built to exploit the scale, resiliency, and flexibility that is associated with cloud computing today,” says Schwenger.

According to Sharma, emerging cloud-native applications are usually customer-facing applications that often generate direct revenues. They are often projects that have to be executed rapidly and are focused on unlocking the potential for achieving differentiation through new channels of engagement.

Cloud-native initiatives often leverage IT resources and capabilities from nearly every part of the enterprise to drive revenues – not just secure operational efficiencies. For many organizations, this represents a new role for IT. It requires CIOs to foster new skills and relationships across lines of business within organizations.

“The biggest challenges associated with cloud-native revolve around the significant mindset shifts that must occur around developing new operating models and skillsets. There are significant people, process and technology management implications with which organizations will have to come to terms,” concludes Sharma.

For more information on BizTechReport podcast interviews, please contact Melissa Fisher at MFisher@BizTechReports.com.