DEVOPSdigest

Cloud-native application development is one of the fastest-growing trends in tech today, with Gartner(link is external) and IDC(link is external) forecasting that 90-95% of apps will be cloud-native by 2025. Thriving companies born in the cloud — such as Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb — prove why this growth is warranted. The approach allows for massive scale at rapid speeds, always-on and always-updated environments, and frees organizations from the inflexibility of legacy systems. Analysts recognize that these cloud-native benefits are possible for any business, not just the tech elite.

While the benefits of cloud-native development are clear, we recently released a report revealing that the majority of companies are well behind the curve and have not yet pursued this technology. Based on a survey of 500+ IT leaders and developers, our report found stark contrasts between expectations and readiness for the use of cloud-native development with more than half of respondents (53%) stating they don't know much about it.

The data highlighted interesting distinctions between cloud-native leaders (those currently using it) and laggards (those who are not) that reveal the current state of the technology, in terms of its adoption, challenges and opportunities in four primary areas:

Knowledge Gap

While 72% of respondents expect that the majority of their apps will be created using cloud-native development by 2023, only 47% of them know a lot about it.

Unexpected Challenges

Cloud-native leaders say that selecting the right tools/platforms (52%), and architectural complexity (51%) are the top two challenges of cloud-native development, whereas cloud-native laggards rank these significantly lower.

Talent Need

Both cloud-native leaders and laggards agree that engineering team growth is a necessity — and a struggle. Respondents share the need for talent across 13 different roles, from back-end, full-stack, and mobile developers to enterprise architects and designers, with cloud architects standing out as a critical role to fill.

Low-Code Advantage

Cloud-native leaders see low-code platforms as winning partners in their cloud-native journeys, with 60% saying low-code platforms are "very good" or "excellent" tools for cloud-native implementation. More than seven in ten (72%) cloud-native leaders work with low-code platforms already.

It's clear there is a disconnect between the future businesses see for themselves and their approach to development and the reality of today's understanding and adoption of cloud-native. With uncertainty around cloud-native's challenges and a glaring talent shortage, a new approach is necessary for businesses to experience the numerous benefits cloud-native development has to offer.

The answer can be found in high-performance low-code tools that remove the challenging roadblocks many companies currently face with cloud-native development and dramatically improve how they build and manage apps for the future. The growth trajectory for cloud-native development isn't slowing down and companies of all sizes, across all industries, will continue to apply cloud-native development to tackle their biggest challenges. By leveraging the cloud and leaning on low-code they can turn their biggest ideas into software and change the course of their business.