While the rise of cloud-native architecture and applications can't be understated, the industry still needs to evolve by reducing the complexity associated with the technology's benefits, according to OutSystems' Senior Director of Platform Strategy Barry Goffe.

The low-code application platform (LCAP) provider's cloud-native development report revealed 72% of developers expect to use cloud-native development for a majority of applications by 2023. Goffe credits this spike in popularity to recognizable value adds like scalability headroom, more resilient applications, auto-scaling up and down, simpler geographic distribution, and a quicker DevOps cadence.

But cloud-native development is much easier said than done. It's incredibly hard to build the underlying infrastructure that makes cloud-native applications possible because technologies like Kubernetes, serverless computing, and microservices are "massively complex, and the people with the skills to handle these tasks are among the most scarce resources in our industry," Goffe told SDxCentral.

That technological complexity means cloud native is "already out of reach of the vast majority of organizations," and the current economic environment renders cloud-native adoption with traditional tools and frameworks "nearly unobtainable for most," he said. To that point, Goffe noted "reducing complexity is where cloud-native needs to evolve so that more companies can take advantage of the benefits."

He touted low-code application development and the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), which provides a high-performance low-code environment with a cloud-native architecture, as key players in lowering the complexity of cloud-native. "With ODC, ... we are able to abstract away the vast majority of the complexity while still delivering the power and benefits of cloud-native" to strategic applications, he explained.

As cloud-native development is expected to increase, IT leaders are acknowledging the need to "make plans to expand their adoption of low-code platforms as they build for the cloud," Goffe said. And with 70% of IT leaders already working with LCAPs, according to OutSystem's report, "it is clear low-code cloud-native application development will quickly become a priority for developer teams," he added.

He explained the benefits of cloud-native development should "empower low-code developers to collaborate, experiment, and execute high-performing, scalable applications for millions of users while enabling increased productivity" compared to traditional development processes.