Architecting for Scale

Chapter 20. Change and 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. AWS provides 50 unique service offerings to meet a variety of computing needs.

So, what are the biggest changes the cloud is bringing to us and our applications? The following sections outline some key changes.

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 state-of-the-art application architectures. In recent years, this state-of-the-art application architecture involves using microservices and other service-based architectures as part of that strategy. This is because technologies such as Docker have made microservice-based ...