What is “Cloud Native” anyway

“Cloud Native” must hold a corner position on the buzz-word-bingo card that is modern IT marketing speak. It tends to be one of those terms thrown around in board rooms or on sales calls by people who don’t really understand what it means, or the implications it might have in the real world. So, what is “Cloud Native” anyway?

Cloud Native is a term used to refer to the organization, processes, and technologies innovated by companies that were “Born in the Cloud”. Think Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Uber, for example. These companies shook the IT world by providing scalability, availability and agility that far surpassed anything that traditional IT could provide. It took these companies years to innovate new ways of doing things, and they changed everything - culture, organizational structure, process, technology, automation and even revenue models, giving birth to the SaaS subscription alongside an explosion in open source technology.