In the world of computing and software, we hear about many cool new technologies and frameworks almost every week. Some of them stay and persist, whereas others fail the test of time and disappear. Needless to say, cloud computing sits very comfortably in the former category. We live in a world where cloud computing powers almost everything that needs serious backend computing power, from Internet of Things (IOT) devices that check the temperature on a refrigerator to video games that show you real-time stats for your scores compared to your peers in multiplayer games.
Cloud computing benefits huge enterprises with offices all over the world, as well as minimal start-ups of two people writing code in a coffee shop. There is tons of material that cover why cloud computing is so important for modern information technologies. For the sake of efficiency, we'll provide a straightforward answer to this question, without going into long bullet points, graphs, and lengthy paragraphs. For businesses, it's all about making money and saving costs. Cloud computing drives costs down significantly for most organizations. That's because cloud computing saves you the cost of building your own data center. No expensive hardware needs to be bought, and no expensive buildings with fancy air-conditioning systems need to be commissioned. Additionally, almost all cloud computing offerings give you the ability to pay for only what you use and no more. Cloud computing also offers massive flexibility for software engineers and IT administrators to do their jobs quickly and efficiently, thus achieving developer happiness and increased productivity.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Design goals of cloud-native applications, especially scalability
- Different cloud service models
- The twelve-factor app
- Microservice architectures
- Communication patterns, especially synchronous versus asynchronous communication
