Cloud technology can relieve some of the most common and pressing problems facing app developers. That’s why the cloud is quickly becoming the foundation for the modern consumer and enterprise app.
What Should a Modern App Look Like? And Why Is It Better?
Modern applications utilize cloud technology and have a plethora of features that benefit both developer and consumer alike. Here are eight features of a successful modern application:
1. Telemetry, instrumentation, and logging
The cloud enables easier-to-implement and efficient telemetry, instrumentation, and logging. Instrumenting your app with the proper telemetry will allow you to collect valuable data. This data helps the DevOps cloud computing teams detect issues before consumers do and allows developers to resolve those issues quickly.
Without the right telemetry and instrumentation, it’s difficult to find and fix bugs, wasting valuable time, money, and resources. You can even miss valuable feedback about app improvements, preventing you from creating the best version of your app. Fortunately, the cloud provides the right telemetry and instrumentation for your modern application to be successful.
2. Loosely coupled
A good modern application is loosely coupled between layers and components (preferably in a microservice architecture for the most flexibility). There are four benefits to a loosely connected application:
– Increased efficiency by allowing component links to be broken or easily reconfigured at will.
– Deployments get easier and quicker as you can deploy small pieces versus larger, more connected apps.
– Scalability is more manageable, letting you scale individual components based on their specific load instead of having to scale multiple dependent pieces.
– Testing is more effective since each piece can have a separate workflow.
3. Modern container technology
Through the cloud, you can containerize your application so it can reliably move from one location or computing environment to another, without bumping into compatibility issues. Containerization prevents developers from coding for individual digital environments and saves time in the long run.
4. Server-less architecture
Alternatively, services like Azure Functions and AWS Lambda offer a server-less architecture that can easily adapt to modern business needs. With server-less architecture, you can run applications without the hassle of managing infrastructure — the cloud does this for you! This feature of the modern app benefits developers by providing a seamless experience on both the front and back end.
5. Include Feature Flags
Feature flags can validate feature functionality with minimal disruption. Teams can perform “soft roll-outs” of new code, features, and functions. These feature flags can be set to “off” by default, enabling code deployment without the new feature taking effect. The teams can then determine when to activate or turn the feature on. This allows for quick validation; if problems are detected, the feature can quickly be turned back off, minimizing negative effects and reducing risk.
Sometimes, development teams will use conditional feature flags to perform “canary” releases. Turning a feature flag on for only a subset of customers allows for limited testing and monitoring prior to turning on the feature for everyone.
6. Use of PaaS
All modern cloud-based applications utilize Platforms as a Service, or PaaS. The biggest advantage of PaaS is the speed of development. PaaS developers take advantage of cloud-hosted features using well-established and common frameworks to simplify cloud application development and DevOps. Because these common frameworks and functions are built on PaaS, it’s easier to support operations, reducing the burden on that team.
7. Store secrets
There are a lot of aspects to think about and plan for when building out a modern application. This is true no matter your role. One of the primary tasks that you have to ensure is that you are making your application as secure as possible. One of the ways that you do that is to treat sensitive information appropriately. Applications typically will need access to different types of configuration data. This data can be in the form of basic settings or it can be sensitive in nature and better help that application connect to other resources in your environment. Things such as:
- Encryption Keys
- Usernames
- Passwords
- Connection Strings
- API Keys
These types of configurations are typically referred to as secrets. It is a best practice to manage and access this sensitive information correctly and in the most secure ways
possible. Typically, there is a service or application dedicated for this type of task. Common system integrations that do this are Key Management Service (AWS) and Azure KeyVault.
8. Externalize application configurations
Reducing the burden on both Ops and DevOps is the ultimate goal, so they’re happier, more efficient, and able to do their work easily. Even the modern app with cloud-based technology lets you externalize application configurations and store them in the environment as lookups, rather than within the application itself or its server. This type of setup allows for easier change control, updates, and audibility — not to mention troubleshooting.
Modern applications have a far greater ability to drive value for your business in so many ways. The features of a modern application utilize the latest technology to bring efficiency, productivity, and ease to your team.
One of the best cloud DevOps best practices is having a “shift-left” mentality and thinking how your app will be deployed and operated from the beginning. Going into building an application with this mindset will help save time for all future deployments. This will also allow for increased flexibility in deployment and help minimize deployment failures. Thinking about your CI/CD from the very beginning of the design and build phases is never a bad idea!