CLOUD NATIVE Application development at the speed of business CLOUD-NATIVE , THE LATEST WAVE OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION, MAKES THE CLOUD A FORCE FOR CREATING BUSINESS VALUE.

2 ARE YOU A CLOUD NATIVE OR JUST A CLOUD MIGRANT?

Increasingly, organizations are finding that they have hit a wall when it comes to delivering new kinds of value and innovation from their existing cloud strategies.

That’s because they have mainly focused For many organizations, unlocking the next level on application migration—moving old apps of cloud benefits requires a different approach. and functionality onto a cloud platform. Companies should adopt a new, “cloud-native” Sure, that “lift and shift” model was fine for mindset—reorganizing people, processes and a while—emulating old-world applications workflows, and creating applications with the and architectures—but being in the cloud cloud specifically in mind. has much more import to the business.

Winners in the new economy will be those Cloud native is the future of application development, who have unlocked the benefits of cloud— with massive potential for business impact—the ability higher agility, speed to innovation and lower to move an idea into production quickly and efficiently. IT costs. But the journey to cloud requires careful navigation and commitment.

3 ADOPTING THE CLOUD-NATIVE MINDSET

Organizations can take advantage of the distinctive, inherent characteristics of the cloud platform such as bi-directional innovation, faster speed to value, more rapid new-product ideation, and greater elasticity, scale and resiliency with cloud native.

Cloud-native technologies, according to the Organizations need to chain together definition developed by the Cloud Native the various technologies, processes and Computing Foundation, “empower organizations services of cloud native to produce an to build and run scalable applications in modern, outcome that has actual business value. dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds.”1 To that definition, however, That is, cloud native is much more than it is important to add, “to innovate faster and just a programming model or a new way enable the business to react to marketplace of writing code. It changes the entire lifecycle events with more agility.” of how requirements are collaboratively incepted, coded, tested and deployed.

4 CLOUD-NATIVE BUSINESS VALUE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION

By adopting a cloud-native approach, IT, more than ever before, can contribute directly to business value.

Cloud-native computing is the latest wave For example, because of the disruption In another example, retailer Gap Inc. used of digital disruption. Being digital means from e-commerce competitors, retailer cloud-native application architectures for price moving from surface-level efficiency plays The Home Depot needed to figure out how optimization and can now handle 6,000 price to true transformation. Both new entrants and to compete more effectively. By leveraging adjustments every four hours.3 incumbents are using digital to drive business cloud-native architectures and continuous advantage. They are redefining the rules, roles delivery practices, the company went from Microservices, lie at the core of the and resources to become giants of disruption. spending six weeks to develop one application cloud-native application architecture, represent and get it in production to deploying new the functionality of the business. In this respect, The ultimate goal of cloud native is to code every 15 minutes.2 cloud native is a new and closer kind of improve the speed and efficiency of service partnership or codependence between assembly, enabling the business to react IT and the business. faster to market change.

5 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CREATE APPLICATIONS IN A TRULY CLOUD-NATIVE MANNER?

Let’s break it down

As discussed, all actual development or Then, cloud native is comprised of four layers programming should be driven by business when it comes to technology and process. events/requirements and serve business needs. First is the architectural style itself, which defines These can include competitive or marketplace the development process, which in turn uses events; new products and services; innovation; the production process, which then runs code and end-user/client/customer interactions. on the execution platform.

Having the architectural tenets or paradigms in place is critical to true cloud-native computing. If you miss one of them, you miss the combinatorial effects of the current IT era.

6 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING

In today’s technology era, cloud is the execution platform; to the left are DevOps processes, which are driven by Agile development—all of which are a result of today’s microservices architectures, which are driven and invoked by business events.

TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS PROCESS AND PEOPLE

MICROSERVICES AGILE DEVOPS CLOUD Business Events/ Architecture Development Production Execution Requirements Style Process Process Platform All development should Defines the Uses the Runs code on the Extremely flexible be driven by business development process production process execution platform delivery platform requirements and serve business needs. • Requirements • Architecting • Source control • Automation • Views • Planning • Deployment • Runtime platform • Competitive or marketplace events • Decoupling • Development • Repo management • Service discovery • New products • Componentization • Testing • Release management • Image/container and services • Governance • TDD/BDD • Configuration control registry • Innovation • Encapsulation • Integration • Packaging • Service catalog management • End-user/client/ • Fail-fast design • Release • Tracing • Scheduling customer interactions • Instrumentation • Operations • Collaboration • Choreography

7 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING Microservices Architecture

By structuring applications as In addition to improving modularity and IDC research has found that 100 percent a collection of loosely coupled making applications easier to develop of businesses with “optimized” cloud adoption services, microservices and test, microservices enable different (organization-wide cloud strategies and policies) development teams to create, deploy have adopted microservices compared to just strengthen continuous and scale their services independently. 18 percent of those with an “ad hoc” approach— delivery and deployment. Organizations can break down just lines of business or other groups their monolithic applications into experimenting with the cloud.4 discrete components, each of which can then be developed, scaled and IDC also found that, by 2021, 80 percent maintained independently. of application development will take place on cloud platforms using microservices and cloud functions.5

8 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING Serverless Architecture

Serverless is a cost-effective These event-driven, function-centric systems are method of enabling microservices. becoming an ever-more essential capability for It is a way to deploy applications playing in today’s digital ecosystems. Serverless architectures enable developers to focus solely while leaving all infrastructure on revenue-generating functions, and not waste details to the cloud provider. time on non-value-added infrastructure issues.

9 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING Agile Development

Agile is all about coping with By splitting the development process into Consider an example from the U.S. Air Force. and driving change—making time windows and providing a continuous Although the organization has a huge technology development processes fast feedback loop, Agile enables rapid, more- budget, 70 percent of it was previously going effective development—and the creation toward just maintaining existing infrastructure. and easy. of super-nimble organizations that can Only 30 percent was going toward research innovate quickly. and development and new software. By implementing Agile practices and developing apps to run on multiple clouds, the Air Force now finds that 70 percent of its budget is going toward R&D and 30 percent toward maintaining existing infrastructure.6

10 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING DevOps

DevOps focuses on speed By equipping developers and infrastructure According to IDC survey , organizations and how quickly a program can experts with the same tools to track and control use DevOps to manage, on average, 25 percent get from the design stage into changes in both code and infrastructure— of their application portfolio today, and expect treating it all as software assets—DevOps lets that percentage to rise to nearly 33 percent in production. It’s largely about you create a production environment within five years.7 Strong adoption of DevOps suggests automation—i.e., eliminating days or hours, rather than in the weeks that the development methodologies are already the need for human involvement or months previously required. in place to support the adoption of cloud-native in the production process. development practices and the development of cloud-native applications.

11 THE ELEMENTS OF CLOUD-NATIVE COMPUTING Cloud

Cloud is an extremely flexible delivery platform. It can support many different architectural and deployment styles, from big, monolithic systems, to large, virtual-machine deployments, to nimble clusters of containers, to large farms of serverless functions.

Cloud is flexible enough to carry most of the IT architectures from the last 20 years. Again, however, to get the maximum business benefits and value from the cloud, one should understand that the platform itself is only one part of the overall cloud-native picture.

12 THE CLOUD-NATIVE APPROACH TO MODULAR AND FLEXIBLE OPEN PLATFORMS

Cloud native delivers scale, resiliency and agility—both for the business and developers—that are almost impossible to achieve with pre-cloud architectures.

By using the cloud-native approach—beginning A bank, for example, can use this approach For example, some manufacturers track with business events and carrying over to all to develop application programming the operation of their devices in the field four elements of the technology process interfaces () that allow third-party systems and proactively send out service techs before tenets—leading organizations across industries to connect to its own, expanding the reach a failure. The company can thus change its are not simply migrating their systems to the of the bank’s mobile-banking capabilities selling model to not selling a device but selling cloud. Instead, they are creating modular and beyond browsers and mobile phones. the operation of the device—a profound change flexible open platforms that can advance Additionally, it enables enterprises to change to the way companies do business that is made a company’s digital agenda, create greater their business models to “as-a-service.” possible by the cloud. business agility and speed development.

13 CLOUD-NATIVE DEVELOPMENT AT A GLOBAL HOSPITALITY COMPANY

Accenture leveraged cloud-native development to help a global hospitality company implement a digital key system, The solution enabled the using Bluetooth™, proximity and other company to fully leverage technologies to let hotel guests unlock their room doors with their mobile phone. its digital ecosystem, including the various Using a cloud-native approach—with a reservation pipelines and microservices-based architecture, Agile other reservation brokers. development processes, DevOps tools and a cloud delivery platform—Accenture was able to develop this capability in just four weeks.

14 CLOUD-NATIVE DEVELOPMENT IS ABOUT MORE THAN THE TECHNOLOGY

Meeting the challenges of cloud-native development and making a strategic move will often necessitate changes to processes, operations, people and culture.

Cloud native is not just substituting one Already, 40 percent of employers report technology for another, nor is it just a different talent shortages.8 And, with significant upshifts programming model. Companies should be expected in skill requirements, that gap is likely prepared for more widespread change. to increase dramatically. In fact, by 2020, it is estimated that more than a third of the desired skillsets of most jobs will be comprised of skills not yet considered crucial today.9

15 SOME CHALLENGES OF CLOUD-NATIVE DEVELOPMENT Change roadmaps are likely to be aggressive. Buy-in from the business to support, enable and fund cloud-native development is essential. And, of course, some “fear of the unknown” is likely to occur.

Managing the business case Managing complexity Managing change

Making the business case for cloud native Also needing to be managed are new Finally, organization, people and culture requires thinking beyond just cost and complexities in platforms, operating models change need to be effectively managed. operational efficiency to areas such as improved and security. Multiple platforms need to be Roles and responsibilities are likely to speed and business agility, a better customer operated as companies wind down the old change, as will skills definitions. experience and a reduction of technical risk. and spin up the new. • Required training and readiness • Operational efficiency • Platforms • Aggressive change roadmaps • Improved delivery speed and business agility • Code/reuse management • Fear of the unknown • Improved customer experience • Operating models and governance • Reduction of technical risk • Multi-platform security • Financial and other forms of risk

16 NO. 01 NO. 02 GOING Create an Enable your organization developers. CLOUD NATIVE: that is more Provide access to all the service-oriented. tools, automation and training your developers need to Instead of traditional function- drive business results from WHERE TO START based structures, organize your cloud native. teams around specific services Here are some key insights and to-dos related to or capabilities. deepening your own maturity in cloud-native development.

NO. 03 NO. 04 NO. 05 Use modern Rearchitect your Enjoy the cloud- and up-to-date organization to native journey. architectures. keep pace with Cloud native represents Cloud native means using cloud-native a renaissance for developers, microservices and a more development. putting them once again front responsive type of architecture. and center in developing The business should be business-critical software. able to generate requirements fast enough and at the same pace as the technicians.

17 ACCENTURE IS ON THE LEADING EDGE OF CLOUD- NATIVE DEVELOPMENT

Accenture tailors leading practices and learning. Our end-to-end, application-led Beyond our work with clients, we are also proprietary tools and platforms in all cloud offerings deliver benefits faster at every stage helping to shape and define cloud native in varieties (public, private, multi and hybrid) of the cloud journey—from strategy and the IT industry. We are a contributing member across multiple types of delivery platforms (IaaS, business case development to migration, of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation PaaS and SaaS) for an individualized journey to optimization and management and digital (CNCF). Accenture is recognized as a key cloud. We collaborate both with our clients and transformation. ecosystem partner for SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, cloud vendors to extract enhanced value from Microsoft, Workday, Amazon Web Services the cloud, leveraging deep, specialized industry Accenture is on the leading edge (AWS), Google, ServiceNow and Pegasystems— experience. We can use verticalized applications, of cloud-native development. We build and has been working in the cloud for more than systems, implementations and approaches on all under extreme workload conditions so that a decade. leading clouds, in coordination with our clients’ your solution will scale across the enterprise. engineers and solution architects. We have more than 25,000 engineering professionals. Our industrialized methodologies, Our innovative assets and We emphasize complex cloud services cross-industry leading practices and development ecosystem relationships can help including artificial intelligence, Internet of Things rigor can help you gain business value from you kickstart development. (IoT), Big Data, predictive analytics and machine cloud native faster and with less risk.

18 IT’S TIME TO MAKE YOUR MOVE.

According to one survey of IT With an agile and flexible approach decision-makers’ priorities over to enterprise technology, tomorrow’s the next couple of years, half of leaders can build the boundaryless them said that they are currently systems that create new spaces for using or evaluating (or plan to use ideas and partnerships to flourish. or evaluate within 10 months), cloud- native architectures.10 It’s important to move quickly with cloud native Is your business to remain competitive. Seek out ready to join them? the support you need and begin developing skills and gaining experience, because cloud native is the future of application development with massive potential for business impact.

19 REFERENCES

1. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/analysis/whos-afraid-of-cloud-native 6. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2018/08/building-a-cloud-native-future

2. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/2018/08/building-a-cloud-native-future and 7. IDC, 2018 DevOps Services Survey: Part 1, January 2018. https://techbeacon.com/cloud-native-architectures-are-reshaping-enterprise https://www.acclivis.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IDC-Futurescapes- Predictions-2018.pdf 3. https://techbeacon.com/cloud-native-architectures-are-reshaping-enterprise 8. IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Cisco. “Multicloud is the New Normal,” March 2018. 4. IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Cisco. “Multicloud is the New Normal,” March 2018. https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/trends/cloud/ https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/trends/cloud/business-cloud- business-cloud-advisor-infobrief-2.pdf advisor-infobrief-2.pdf 9. “The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy 5. IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2018 Predictions, October 2017. for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” January 2016. World Economic Forum, https://www.acclivis.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/IDC-Futurescapes- http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf Predictions-2018.pdf 10. Cloud Foundry Foundation, “Where PaaS, Containers and Serverless Stand in a Multi-Platform World” (report), based on a global survey of 601 IT decision- makers, March 2018. https://www.cloudfoundry.org/multi-platform-trend- report-2018

20 Contacts About Accenture Miha Kralj Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad Managing Director, Accenture Cloud range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and [email protected] operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest Siki Giunta delivery network—Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology Managing Director, Accenture Cloud to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their [email protected] stakeholders. With 459,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Bill Wood Visit us at www.accenture.com Senior Manager, Accenture Cloud [email protected]

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