Cloud native has exploded, how can enterprises and developers seize the opportunity?

Author: Wu

As the cloud computing industry matures, cloud native changes the traditional development model and accelerates the development and operation and maintenance efficiency of program applications. More and more industries are based on cloud native and implement applications through open technical standards to fully release the cloud era. the value of. According to IDC statistics, the proportion of cloud-native applications will reach 80% in 2023.

Today, more and more developers are joining the wave of cloud-native development: According to the State of Cloud-Native Development Report, there are 6.8 million cloud-native developers worldwide, compared with the 4.7 million cloud-native developers reported in May 2020. In comparison, the number of cloud-native developers worldwide is growing rapidly.

Against this background, Alibaba Cloud has upgraded the middleware performance challenge, which has been held for 5 consecutive years based on the Tianchi platform, to a cloud native programming challenge, providing a stage for global developers to solve world-class problems. The Cloud Native Practical Summit and the 2nd Cloud Native Programming Challenge Final Award Ceremony ended successfully in Shanghai on January 11.

Looking back on 2021, what are the major technological breakthroughs in cloud native? In the cloud-native era, development models and technical standards are constantly changing. How should enterprises implement cloud-native? What competencies should developers have?

To this end, CSDN interviewed Ding Yu, general manager of Alibaba Cloud's cloud native application platform during the Cloud Native Practice Summit, and asked him to interpret Alibaba Cloud's product matrix, latest practices and breakthroughs in the cloud native field in detail, and to discuss future development trends, with a view to helping Developers and enterprises clarify their thinking.

Ding Yu, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Cloud Native Application Platform

Reviewing the development and transformation of cloud-native technologies in 2021

Today, cloud native is with a strong development trend, pointing to the next decade of cloud computing. Cloud-native giants in 2021: In January, Red Hat plans to acquire StackROX, a container and Kubernetes-native security company, to combine its capabilities with Red Hat OpenShift; in December, GitLab acquires Opstrace to expand its DevOps platform; HashiCorp, which provides cloud infrastructure automation services, goes public and becomes the world's most valuable open source company.

In terms of technology, the popularity of cloud native key 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 scale in the field of cloud native technology will increase. Continue to rise, user applications and software releases are more frequent. In the production environment of users, the adoption rate of container technology is nearly 70%, and serverless technology continues to heat up, with nearly 40% of application users.

Looking back on cloud-native technologies in 2021, the following development trends emerge:

1. Containers are everywhere . Containers can shield the differences in heterogeneous environments, build an application-centric multi-environment management interface, manage the IaaS layer infrastructure downwards, and allow application software to be output, operated, and delivered in heterogeneous environments; upwardly support various tasks, undertake Big data, database, AI, middleware and other services enhance the capabilities of storage and computing separation, hybrid deployment, and O&M automation. Containers break the boundaries of the cloud, greatly extend the capabilities of the cloud, and gradually evolve into a "cloud-native operating system", showing the development trend of "unbounded computing and unlimited carrying".

Second, the continuous evolution of Serverless . According to SlashData's "Cloud Native Development Status Report", 4.6 million developers use container orchestration tools, 4 million developers use serverless platforms, and 1.8 million use both. Knative will be released in 2021 to improve the end-to-end user experience and ease of use of serverless container application delivery, and become a widely installed serverless on Kubernetes. Nowadays, many enterprise services are being fully serverless, and developers do not need to pay attention to general operations such as operation and maintenance, and can focus more on the research and development of core business.

3. The core technology of the application layer is open source . Under the trend of open source swallowing software, there will be more and more cloud-native open source projects at the application layer. Open source is aimed at the broadest developer group, establishing technical standards and ecology, attracting more people to use open source technology, and forming a good development trend .

Fourth, software and hardware collaborative optimization . Further optimization of computing, network and storage is driven by high-density and high-frequency scenarios of containers. For example, Alibaba Cloud releases more performance dividends through software and hardware collaborative solutions such as container + Shenlong bare metal and RDMA joint optimization.

It can be seen that a new computing architecture with the cloud as the core is taking shape. The system evolves from three levels: at the infrastructure layer, the cloud defines the underlying technologies such as hardware, self-developed chips, servers, and operating systems, and builds cloud-based technologies. The core hardware system; the core software is reconstructed based on the cloud, the open source community has become an innovation center, and new development methods such as low-code are spawned to make the cloud easier to use; at the application layer, with the development of 5G networks in the future, computing and data acceleration will become Migration to the cloud has spawned new species such as cloud computing, metaverse, and autonomous driving.

Under the cloud-native wave, the thinking and changes of technology companies

We live in an era where everyone is a developer and everyone is a technology company. Technology is changing, and enterprises' demands for technology are also changing. So how can technology companies better enhance their technical value when the cloud native wave arrives?

Take 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 it independently developed Internet middleware in 2006. In 2011, Alibaba deployed a containerized infrastructure on a group scale, creating a precedent for Chinese technology companies to apply cloud native technology on a large scale. In 2015, containers and middleware were productized, and cloud-native technologies were fully commercialized; in 2019, 100% of Alibaba's core systems were on the cloud, and millions of containers supported Double Eleven; in 2020, Alibaba's core application systems were fully cloud-native ; In 2021, Alibaba Cloud will fully enter the cloud-native era.

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

This year, Alibaba Cloud has released a number of technology and product upgrades in the cloud native field. For example, Alibaba Cloud’s container service has been fully upgraded to ACK Anywhere, the concept of All on Serverless has been proposed, and the industry’s first cloud-native technology middle-stage CNStack has been released, and many cloud-native projects have been open sourced. Wait.

In the field of containers, Alibaba Cloud has deployed a cloud-native operating system centered on the container product family, so that enterprises can obtain consistent container infrastructure capabilities wherever they need cloud. In September 2021, Alibaba Cloud Container The service is fully upgraded to ACK Anywhere.

ACK Anywhere supports unified management of central cloud, local cloud, and edge cloud container clusters, as well as unified management of customer-built clusters and other cloud Kubernetes clusters. ACK Anywhere provides four core capabilities of consistent experience, flexible computing power, capacity reduction, and simplified disaster recovery, allowing enterprises to use containers for unified cluster management, unified resource scheduling, unified data disaster recovery, and unified application delivery.

In order to better meet customers' needs for deploying Kubernetes clusters in data centers, Alibaba Cloud has launched the ACK Distro, a container service, so that enterprises can enjoy the same secure and reliable enterprise-level capabilities as ACK on their own infrastructure. ACK Distro is currently available for download. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud released the distributed cloud container platform ACK ONE, which is an enterprise-level multi-region/multi-cluster container management platform that can help enterprises embrace the technical empowerment brought by cloud native in any region, any infrastructure, and any scenario. , and provide a consistent management, delivery, operation and maintenance experience.

In Gartner's latest global container public cloud competition landscape report, Alibaba Cloud has been the only Chinese enterprise selected in China for three consecutive years. Its products cover serverless containers, service meshes, security sandbox containers, hybrid clouds and edge containers. One of the service providers with the most complete coverage of key capabilities of global container products.

Today, serverless is widely adopted by more and more enterprises due to its elastic scaling and pay-as-you-go features. Alibaba Cloud proposes the concept of All on Serverless in order to enable serverless to achieve full scene coverage. The serverless application engine SAE allows developers to migrate to the cloud without changing the code, no matter which language they use, such as Go, PHP, or Java. Fully managed, O&M-free, and extremely flexible.

In 2018, Alibaba Cloud put forward the concept of "cloud native trinity", formed a unified technical system of "self-developed technologies", "open source projects" and "commercial products" and opened it to the outside world. Through the wide application of open source middleware such as Dubbo, RocketMQ, SpringCloud Alibaba, Nacos, Seata, Arthas, Sentinel, ChaosBlade, etc., we will promote the standard and ecological construction of cloud native middleware and maximize the technical value.

Today, open source plays a crucial role in the cloud-native field, and cloud-native open source projects have played a role in the entire software life cycle. We have observed that Alibaba Cloud has been adding code to cloud-native open source:

At the 2022 Cloud Native Combat Summit, Alibaba Cloud added a new piece to the cloud native open source map. Alibaba Cloud officially open sourced AppActive, the industry's first application multi-active project, to create a new standard for disaster recovery in the cloud native field, and released the "Application Multi-active Technology White Paper" to help Enterprises quickly build an application multi-active architecture to protect business continuity and enterprise core values.

"Application Multi-Active Technology White Paper" officially released

In addition, several major open source projects of Alibaba Cloud have also been newly upgraded, such as the Dubbo 3.0 upgrade, which provides a complete set of solutions, migration paths and best practices to help enterprises achieve cloud-native transformation; Nacos released milestone version 2.0, which has carried out the kernel. Layered abstraction, extended the plug-in mechanism, and improved performance by 10 times; Alibaba Cloud messaging middleware RocketMQ 5.0 was upgraded to become a hyper-converged platform for messages, events, and streams; Launched the OpenYurt cloud native/containerized edge computing solution; released The new version of KubeVela brings a new UI console to further simplify application delivery and management in complex cloud-native environments; the first major version of OpenKruise is officially released, bringing cloud-native application automation to a new peak.

Cloud native, the shortest path for enterprise digital innovation

Under the transformation of cloud-native technology, Ding Yu put forward a point of view: "Cloud-native is the shortest path for enterprise digital innovation."

From the perspective of enterprise IT system demands, technology as a productive force can create greater technical value and lead business development. In the process of enterprise cloud migration, cloud native technology, as a representative of advanced productivity, brings rapid iteration of cloud business to enterprises and enhances enterprise competitiveness. Therefore, when an enterprise implements cloud native, it can be divided into several steps:

One is the of infrastructure and the Internet of core technologies. The biggest advantage of the Internet is small steps and quick iterations. Compared with the traditional IT architecture and the Internet architecture, there is a ten-fold difference in the project iteration cycle. The traditional software R&D cycle is in years, and a large version may be released every year, while the Internet software R&D cycle is in weeks or days. Through small-scale iterations, agile businesses can quickly receive market responses and feedback and seize market opportunities. .

The second is business and intelligent decision-making. Data-based governance of system applications, data-based calculations through big data and AI technologies, and final decision-making through data trends. Data can fully release technical productivity, allowing enterprises to rely on technology to achieve business breakthroughs, which will bring huge opportunities for digital innovation and transformation to enterprises.

In the specific practice process, Alibaba Cloud has observed that some enterprises need a simple, low-threshold, high-integration, and scenario-based integrated development, operation and maintenance platform to implement cloud native. Therefore, CNStack, the middle platform of cloud native technology, came into being.

CNStack satisfies customers' demands for offline highly integrated platforms in various typical scenarios, so that enterprises' digital transformation is not constrained by technology, focusing on the business itself, and accelerating digital innovation of enterprises. At the same time, CNStack provides a large number of solutions, which are refined into four scenarios: four scenarios: industry application, SaaS software output, edge management platform, and community. There are new scenarios planned in the future.

CNStack Community Edition is officially open for download

Take DingTalk as an example. In the past, if the proprietary DingTalk was deployed to heterogeneous IaaS, it might take several weeks to complete. Now it can be completed in a few days through CNStack, which greatly improves the efficiency of delivery and operation and becomes a powerful tool for improving productivity.

In the process of digital transformation, in addition to improving business efficiency, enterprises also need to face various uncertainties. How to ensure the stability of the business when the business is growing rapidly?

multi-active disaster recovery solution has become an important choice for enterprises in the cloud era . Ding Yu said that as more and more enterprise services such as health codes become social infrastructure, business continuity and safe production have become the lifeblood of enterprises, and multi-activity disaster recovery has become a requirement that enterprises must consider.

AppActive, the first application multi-active project in the industry, is officially open source

Since 2013, Alibaba Cloud has implemented the remote multi-active solution, and formed the application-centric cloud-native disaster recovery architecture MSHA based on years of experience to help different industries improve the multi-active capability of business applications. "This technology is not just a white snow, and it is not only needed by leading enterprises, but a problem that enterprises should consider at the beginning of building an IT architecture. It should become a common technology in the industry." Ding Yu emphasized.

In the era of all-cloud development, how can developers seize the opportunity?

According to statistics, more than 75% of enterprises will use containers in production environments in 2022. When an enterprise builds its IT architecture, the cloud is no longer an isolated third-party platform, but becomes a part of the enterprise's IT architecture. Cloud native is revolutionizing the development model. Enterprises need to consider issues such as cloud operation and maintenance, cloud development, cloud iteration, and cloud disaster recovery. Therefore, the era of all-cloud development has arrived, and developers and enterprises will usher in a golden age of technological dividends.

So how should developers adapt to these changes? Ding Yu said that since the cloud is fully compatible with open source and ecological standards, developers do not need to learn the most core technical protocols, technical frameworks, technical performance, technical standards, etc., but need to upgrade their personal skills and cognition, and re-adapt to some work modes, such as How to do authority governance, asset governance, and cloud operation and maintenance on the cloud.

Ding Yu suggested that cloud native open source projects have covered all aspects of the software development life cycle. Enterprises can pay attention to relevant open source products, fully understand the forms of different products in different scenarios, and make reasonable product selections based on industry evaluations. Business-centric enterprises can use the rich products provided by the cloud platform to complete the construction of the underlying technology, so that they can focus more on their business.

Click here to learn more about the replay of the Alibaba Cloud Cloud Native Practice Summit.