If you’ve committed your organization to cloud-native application development, you’re in good company. Research indicates organizations that take an aggressive pace in adopting cloud-native development are more likely than their less-ambitious peers to report higher revenues. As a result, more and more development efforts are now being envisioned and engineered to be cloud-native from the start, and many of those programs represent an organization’s first foray into the cloud-native development process.
Of course, there are smart, efficient and proven ways to do cloud-native development, with an expanding number of best practices for organizations to follow and benefit from. Still, there are always risks and challenges, so it pays to have some help along the way.
And let’s be clear: Risk management and mitigation are extremely important in cloud-native development, whether you’re a startup or a colossal, multinational corporation. That’s because doing cloud-native the right way means watching out for―and steering clear of―pitfalls. For instance:
- Being certain who the target user is for a cloud-native application and understanding the value of the business opportunity it creates for the organization.
- Coming up to speed on DevOps practices, data integration challenges, integrated security and analytics.
- Adopting a development methodology uniquely suited for cloud environments, as opposed to traditional waterfall-style development.
- Determining the proper metrics for success.
- Setting and managing timetables that are aggressive enough to speed time to market without shortchanging quality, innovation and security.
And while cloud-native development is rapidly gaining acceptance, it still is a fairly young discipline. That means you’ll have to scour your developer resources to find people with experience in cloud-native development practices.
But sometimes, the smartest thing you can do is find a good partner.
IBM Cloud Garage: Your partner in cloud-native development and innovation
Regardless of your organization’s size, vertical industry, technical skill set or experience with cloud computing, it’s likely that your cloud-native development efforts can benefit from a collaborative, collegial experience with IBM Cloud Garage, a startup environment and mindset utilizing a diverse group of experts to help organizations deploy applications on IBM Cloud.
To fulfill its mission―“Make clients of all sizes successful deploying applications on IBM Cloud”―the IBM Cloud Garage team employs cloud development specialists who help organizations rapidly define, design, develop, validate, analyze, operate and maintain cloud-native applications. By utilizing industry best practices, startup thinking and IBM’s technical and business expertise, clients not only learn how to adopt and build a cloud-native development culture, but also create actual cloud-native applications that deliver measurable business value faster than would be the case on their own.
Organizations ranging from five-person application development shops to the world’s largest enterprise clients have used IBM Cloud Garage to accomplish a number of objectives, including:
- Learn the IBM Cloud Garage Method for cloud-native development and how to use it to improve their competitive position and create a richer experience for their customers.
- Understand more about cloud environments and apply those learnings to using and operating their own cloud tools, services and resources. Whether it’s developing cloud-native applications, migrating on-premises applications to a hybrid cloud environment or transforming their approach to IT infrastructure via a platform-as-a-service model, IBM Cloud Garage offers clients a broader, more holistic view of the cloud as a business disruptor.
- Expand their application portfolio, either for internal use or commercial opportunities with their own clients. IBM Cloud Garage professionals guide organizations through the process of creating a minimum viable product for anything from a small application that is developed and deployed in a few weeks to an overhaul of a mission-critical application that is completed far faster than the client could do on its own.
- Transform their agile development and DevOps processes. IBM’s extensive experience in agile development and DevOps is fertile territory for organizations looking to modernize how, when and where they develop cloud-native applications “at the speed of business.”
Conclusion
Whether your organization is just beginning its foray into cloud-native applications or is on a fast track to accelerate ongoing efforts, much of the hard work can be facilitated by working with an experienced partner that brings a culture of creativity, innovation and collaboration to the process.
IBM Cloud Garage helps small and large organizations alike find new paths on their journeys to the cloud, paths that lead them to faster, better application development using the combination of a leading public cloud platform and the proven technical and business expertise of IBM’s cloud experts.
