What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud native and cloud hosted applications are often misused in place of each other, when in reality, their benefits, implementation and drawbacks differ significantly. While both types of applications or platforms run in the cloud, cloud native solutions are built specifically for the limitations and strengths of cloud computing, whereas cloud hosted solutions are designed for local implementation. This creates several key drawbacks and advantages:

Cloud Native

These types of applications are built in agile development environments, making the addition of new patches, changes, and features easy and effortless for users. When combined with the power of open APIs, the possibilities for interconnected and fluid web applications are practically limitless. However, the drawback is the perceived loss of data security, since no data is stored locally within your company’s firewall. However, this is largely a perceived drawback, given the advancements in cloud-native application security and security regulation, whether PCI, HIPPA, GDPR, or any other new form.

Furthermore, by utilizing the principle of economies of scale, the costs of hosting and computing on cloud servers is spread between all the users of a platform, drastically lowering costs

Cloud Hosted

On the other hand, cloud hosted applications behave more like legacy or local-hosted programs in most respects. They are designed for local implementation environments, but are deployed on dedicated servers so they can be accessed anywhere. This provides the key benefit of lowering capital expenditure costs for companies, as they no longer have to purchase their own server stack to host legacy programs from Oracle and SAP.

However, this does not provide many of the ease of development, use, and upgrading found in cloud-native environments, as infrastructure for these cloud hosted applications still exists in dedicated servers, not too far removed from the old legacy on-premises systems.