Cloud scalability and resiliency from first principles

The frequency and impact of cloud outages will increase. To reduce the impact, users must architect cloud-native applications that are resilient to outages. No matter how well designed these applications are, users ultimately place their faith in their cloud provider to deliver core services that are available and performant. This report discusses resilient cloud applications and explains the role that newer technologies and approaches, such as multicloud, containers and microservices, can play.

KEY POINTS

• Cloud computing does not inherently offer better resiliency or performance than noncloud infrastructure. Cloud outages continue to impact major organizations and this suggests users do not adequately architect cloud applications to take account of outages.
• Most cloud applications reside with a single provider and do not operate across multiple regions, primarily because of a lack of interoperability between providers. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
• Organizations have no visibility into redundancy or protective systems in the cloud, which creates risks that need to be managed.