Cloud Natives

While many established organisations are travelling their own “journey to the cloud”, many younger companies will be waiting for them when they arrive.

I like to work with organisations with complex IT requirements. You could say that I am a sucker for punishment, but I happen to think I do a good job working through complex systems and delivering results. These organisations have a significant investment in software, people and processes that rely on traditional ’downtime is a bad word’ type infrastructure found in many data centres.

Most of these organisations are adopting cloud services in some way.  Either they are doing lift-and-shift transformations, or more often are directing any new development opportunities into cloud platforms.

A number of newer (and typically smaller) companies that have not grown up with what is now called “legacy infrastructure”.  These companies started off by using cloud services and typically still do, and some of these companies are getting larger.  I call these companies cloud natives, they were born in the era of the cloud, and unlike their older competitors, they don’t have a legacy or traditional IT.  They have had the ability to choose between traditional IT or one of the many forms of cloud offerings – and of rate most part they have chosen the cloud.

Cloud native companies are not providers of cloud services, they are consumers.  The are ordinary businesses that just happen to have used cloud technology from the beginning.

As time goes on the attrition that is business will take down many of these new organisations, some who made poor decisions and many that were just unlucky – leaving behind those with a fair share of luck but a history of wise choices.

Why is this relatively small subset of business relevant to the rest of the industry?  It is because while the rest are making their journey to the cloud, the cloud natives are already there.  If you want to know where your journey is heading, you know where to look – and maybe avoid some of the trial and error that so many cloud traditions go through.