The Best Choice in the Age of Digital Innovation

Three-layer evolution of cloud origin

Today, cloud natives are developing strongly, pointing to the next decade of cloud computing.

In terms of technology, the popularity of key cloud native technologies such as containers, microservices, and service grids continues to rise. According to the China Cloud Native User Survey Report by the Cloud Native Industry Alliance, in 2021, the construction investment and cluster size in the cloud native technology field continued to rise, and user applications and software releases became more frequent. In the user production environment, the adoption rate of container technology is nearly 70%, and Serverless technology continues to heat up, with nearly 40% of application users.

Currently, a new cloud centric computing architecture is being formed, which has evolved from three levels: cloud native 1.0 is the cloud native biochemistry of the infrastructure layer, and cloud downwardly defines underlying technologies such as hardware, self developed chips, servers, and operating systems, building a cloud centric hardware system; Cloud Native 2.0 is the cloud native biochemistry of industry applications. Core software is reconstructed based on the cloud, and the open source community becomes an innovation center. At the same time, it promotes new development methods such as low code, making the cloud easier to use and making innovation cheaper; Cloud Native 3.0 is a synchronous and integrated development of cloud and network ends. In the application layer, with the development of 5G networks in the future, computing and data will accelerate the migration to the cloud, spawning new species such as cloud computing, metauniverse, and autonomous driving.

AliCloud provides "one-stop" cloud native capabilities to enable enterprises to focus on business

For enterprises, cloud native is the shortest path for enterprise digital innovation. Taking Alibaba as an example, Alibaba, as the earliest company in China to deploy cloud native technology on a large scale, has started cloud native practice since independently developing Internet middleware in 2006. In 2011, Alibaba deployed a container based infrastructure on a group scale, pioneering the large-scale application of cloud native technology by Chinese technology companies. In 2015, containers and middleware were productively exported, and cloud native technology was fully commercialized; In 2019, Alibaba's core system was 100% clouded, and millions of containers supported the Double 11; In 2020, Alibaba's core application system will be fully Yunyuan Biochemical; In 2021, Alibaba Cloud will fully enter the cloud native era.

As the technology base for millions of customers in the cloud native era, Alibaba Cloud has a rich family of cloud native products, covering a full stack of technical capabilities such as underlying infrastructure, data intelligence, and distributed applications, serving over 80% of Chinese technology enterprises, covering the needs of 197 different industry scenarios.

Last year, Alibaba Cloud released a number of technology and product upgrades in the cloud native domain, such as the comprehensive upgrade of Alibaba Cloud container service to ACK Anywhere; Propose the concept of All on Serverless, release the industry's first cloud native technology, Zhongtai CNStack, and open source the industry's first application multi activity project, AppActive. Provide a cloud native technology base for many enterprises' one-stop digital innovation.

Not only that!

In April of this year, Koordinator, a hybrid system that was born inside Alibaba and has saved the company billions every year, was officially opened up after years of dual 11 polishing. By opening up hybrid and scheduling capabilities to the entire industry through open source, we can help more enterprise customers improve the efficiency, stability, and computing costs of cloud native workloads, and achieve low-carbon and green computing.

Alibaba Cloud Native Hybrid System Koordinator Officially Open Source

In addition, in response to the fragmentation and lack of interoperability of concepts in microservice governance in different frameworks and languages in the field of microservices, Alibaba Cloud collaborated with companies such as Bilibili and Byte to discuss how to standardize and popularize service governance, thereby jointly launching and opening up the OpenSergo project. OpenSergo is committed to reaching consensus among different microservice frameworks and communication protocols to form service governance specifications.

OpenSergo is officially open source, with multiple vendors jointly building microservice governance specifications and implementations

Continuous exploration: cloud native landing requires strategies and references

For enterprises, the entire process of going to the cloud should be done according to the situation and mode of the enterprise. The industry will divide cloud deployment into several stages. First of all, the simplest way is to rehosting, which is to move the original offline computer room to the cloud. Originally, offline is a virtual machine, while on the cloud is also a virtual machine. This often brings financial changes to enterprises. Previously, they owned assets, but now they have become cloud services. This is a translation for enterprises, with a slightly lower overall value, but also the lowest cost. Basically, there is no need to modify the business, and there is no need to change the operation and maintenance mode. All enterprises can do this.

The second stage is Replatform. This is related to some concepts of cloud native, such as changing the original virtual machine into a container mode. The typical characteristic of Replatform is that enterprises do not need to modify their applications, but only need to change the system operation and maintenance mode. In many cases, the cost and cost of modifying applications are relatively high, while containerization generally does not require modification of enterprise applications. In addition, it is changing from self built open source tools to using products from cloud vendors, such as self built MySQL to RDS from cloud vendors. Enterprises can truly see the cost reduction and efficiency gains brought by cloud native technology.

The final stage, which many enterprises are also working on, is Refactor, or refactoring. The entire application architecture of an enterprise often undergoes some changes, including serverless, microservice, and so on. This stage will involve application transformation, but it is also the time to truly enable the application side to take advantage of the cloud. Enterprises can combine their own characteristics and choose to gradually implement cloud based biochemistry.

In addition, enterprises also depend on their own business types. Now there is a concept called "bi state IT", which refers to steady state and sensitive state. Steady state is a business that does not undergo significant changes within the enterprise. For this type of business, it is recommended that you only do a Replatform because its iteration speed is not so fast and business changes are not significant, but you need to enhance stability and flexibility through modes such as containerization. However, there are still rapid iterations in the sensitive business, and it may be recommended to use Refactors, such as microservices, to improve the overall research and development efficiency.

As mentioned above, enterprises need to comprehensively select suitable methods for cloud computing based on their business types and technical reserves. On the one hand, if an enterprise has a business drive, it will have enough resources to invest. On the other hand, enterprises can also have enough practice in selecting and implementing technologies.

Cloud native determines the results of enterprise digital transformation. As the digital transformation enters the deep water zone, enterprises fully release the dividends of the cloud through cloud native architecture and deployment, while reducing costs and carbon emissions, achieving sustainable development. Cloud native helps enterprises achieve cloud based infrastructure, Internet-based core technology, modern application architecture, and intelligent business. The most intuitive business value that these features bring to an enterprise is resource elasticity, system stability, application agility, business intelligence, and trusted security!

Based on this, Alibaba Cloud has released the "Cloud Native Practical Case Set", which provides reference and reference for enterprise practice and implementation of cloud native through technical outlook, industry analysis, and practical case interpretation. "Independent travelers are fast, and multiple travelers are far away. One enterprise can quickly land on cloud native, but only by allowing the entire industry to land on cloud native can future enterprises go further.".