Architecting for Scale, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13. Five Industry Trends Changed by the Cloud

Cloud computing has changed the way we think about building and running our applications. But while how we build applications has changed around the cloud, the cloud itself has changed, and the way we think about the cloud has changed as well.

What Has Changed in the Cloud?

The cloud has matured over the past decade. Cloud providers have increased their product offerings. They no longer simply provide file storage and compute capacity. For example, AWS provides over 160 unique service offerings¹ to meet a variety of computing needs. Azure and Google offer hundreds more.

So what are the biggest changes the cloud is bringing to us and our applications? The following are five industry trends that have been driven, changed, and encouraged by the cloud.

Change #1: Acceptance of Microservice-Based Architectures

As we have discussed in this book, service- and microservice-based architectures have grown in popularity in recent years. Migrating applications to some form of a service-based architecture is becoming a standard technique in reducing technical debt and making applications easier to maintain.

As companies look toward moving their applications to the cloud, they are moving to the cloud usually as part of an overall product modernization strategy. This modernization strategy includes moving to a state-of-the-art application architecture. In recent years, this state-of-the-art application architecture involves using microservices ...