The Cloud Native Attitude • Anne Currie & Sarah Wells
Authors Anne Currie and Sarah Wells discuss the core principles of "The Cloud Native Attitude", defining it not as a specific technology stack but as a cultural mindset focused on removing bottlenecks and enabling rapid, iterative change. The summary covers the primacy of CI/CD, the evolution of orchestrators like Kubernetes, and how a cloud native approach is a critical enabler for building sustainable, green software.
The concept of “Cloud Native” is less about a specific set of tools and more about an “attitude”—a fundamental desire and capability to change systems, adapt to new services, and relentlessly address organizational bottlenecks. It’s a journey that begins not with technology, but with identifying what is truly slowing the organization down.
The Core Attitude: A Focus on Bottlenecks and Change
The cloud native journey originates from a need to solve the most pressing constraints on delivery. Historically, the primary bottleneck was infrastructure provisioning. At the Financial Times, for example, acquiring and racking a new server took six months. This delay made rapid innovation, such as developing microservices, impossible. The first step in a cloud native transformation is therefore to identify and gain consensus on the primary bottleneck holding the organization back. If it’s not infrastructure, a move to the cloud may not be the right solution.
The “attitude” is the willingness to make a significant, multi-year investment to become a more agile and reactive organization. This requires persistent effort and buy-in from the top to the bottom of the organization. The ultimate goal is to achieve the ability to change systems quickly and efficiently.
CI/CD as the Cornerstone of Cloud Native
While the original CNCF definition of cloud native focused on containers, microservices, and orchestration, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) has emerged as the most critical and foundational element. Every successful cloud native adoption story is built on a solid foundation of CI/CD, enabling fast, frequent, and small deployments to production.
An interesting perspective is that CI/CD is a prerequisite for tackling any complex technical challenge. An organization can’t succeed in a difficult endeavor like a cloud native transformation without the tight feedback loops and incremental progress that CI/CD provides. The ability to release code on the same day it’s written is not just an efficiency gain; it’s a transformative experience for developers and the business.
The Evolving Technical Landscape
The technology landscape has changed dramatically since the first edition of “The Cloud Native Attitude” was written. The “orchestrator wars” have decisively ended with Kubernetes becoming the de facto standard, displacing early contenders like Mesos and Docker Swarm. Case studies from the book, such as Starling Bank and Skyscanner, reflect this industry-wide consolidation around Kubernetes.
However, the underlying principles of orchestration remain constant. The value is in the abstraction and automation, not the specific tool. Similarly, there has been a pragmatic shift away from a dogmatic adherence to microservices. Organizations recognize the complexity of highly distributed systems and are adopting a variety of architectural patterns—including modular monoliths, serverless, and “macroservices”—that still facilitate the core goal: small, independent, and frequent releases.
Cloud Native as an Enabler for Green Software
A cloud native posture is essential for implementing advanced sustainability practices. While initial, significant gains in carbon reduction (30-50%) can come from simple, manual “thriftathons”—finding and turning off unused resources—the next level of efficiency requires automation.
- Automated Operations: To achieve deeper carbon reductions (upwards of 75%), organizations must automate processes like right-sizing and scaling down. This requires the dynamic capabilities inherent in cloud native platforms, such as autoscaling.
- Adopting Efficient Platforms: The most advanced stage involves running on highly efficient code and platforms. It is prohibitively expensive for most enterprises to write this code themselves. The cloud native ability to easily adopt and integrate with efficient third-party services and platforms is therefore key. A cloud native architecture gives you the ability to move to a “green platform” that reduces your carbon footprint under your feet.
The Pitfalls of “Lift and Shift”
A common failure pattern is the “lift and shift” migration, where applications are moved to the cloud without being re-architected. This approach often results in higher costs and a larger carbon footprint because it doesn’t leverage cloud-native services and encourages over-provisioning.
Psychologically, a large, monolithic lift-and-shift project runs counter to the iterative, small-step mindset required for cloud native success. It burns out teams and financial will, leaving the organization in the cloud but without any of the promised benefits, making the next, necessary steps much harder to sell. True success comes from iterative change and leveraging cloud provider services, such as managed databases, rather than rebuilding existing components on cloud infrastructure.
A Practical Path to Getting Started
- Identify the Real Bottleneck: Before starting any project, thoroughly investigate and ensure you are solving the most significant problem holding your organization back.
- Achieve Organizational Alignment: This is step one. A cloud native transformation is too difficult to succeed without a coherent engineering strategy and complete buy-in. Everyone, from leadership to individual contributors, must be aligned on the goal.
- Implement CI/CD: If you do nothing else, implement CI/CD. It is the foundational practice that enables everything else.