Can Going Cloud-native Eliminate Tech Debt?

A cloud-native computing approach combines domain-driven design and software best practices. Anupam Kulkarni, CEO & Co-Founder, iauro Systems Pvt. Ltd shares how the correct implementation of such an approach can reduce technical debt.

In today’s day and age, time is money, and convenience is essential. This is because of tech intervention that has become part and parcel of our every day. Of all the modern industries that make up the economy, Information Technology is probably the one growing at the fastest pace. Software development has seen many evolutions in the last few years alone, but developer stress levels continue to be high. One of the many reasons for this is tech debt, which most technology enterprises grapple with, no matter their size or scale. 

Technical Debt Reversal

Deloitte identifies technical debt reversal as a critical ongoing trendOpens a new window for technology architecture worldwide, especially with the modernization of applications on the rise like never before. This is an umbrella term but encompasses many different challenges that CIOs and CTOs have to deal with. A few of them include:

• Friction between engineer teams and customer expectations
• Complex software and traditional development processes
• Decreased efficiency leading to higher costs
• Code that is not good enough for delivery
• Pre-existing legacy systems 
• Failure to automate and added maintenance risks

Technical debt is an absolute liability. While moving to novel technology is the need of the hour, embracing this digital transformation means understanding the software development supply chain one step at a time. It is no longer entirely in-house, and everything right from developer tools, third-party software, application stacks and runtimes and testing frameworks need to be considered. As enterprises move to the cloud, the risks of creating more debt are as high as the opportunity of decreasing it. Building cloud environments with a dated architectural mindset can also add costs and increase migration times. 

A common misconception about this modernized process is that the more agile methodologies become, the faster they are – while integrating high-level technology to ensure this agility is quite complex. API-driven interfaces may be stable, but they are not static. This is a major contributing factor for technical debt, as maintenance takes up most developers’ time. 

See More: Forecast for 2022: More Cloud All Round

Benefits of Cloud-native Technology

The entire situation is almost paradoxical, but here is where CIOs and CTOs must consider the many benefits that cloud-native technology offers. It gives developer teams and leaders the chance to dive deep into the notoriously persistent messes in pre-created infrastructure. Here’s how:

1. Bring in the right tools: More than 30% of developer time goes into repetitive, mundane tasks without the correct tooling. The PaaS model drives public cloud offerings to support custom software needs that can scale quickly and simultaneously work within multiple application setups. Microservices is worth considering as it has become a standard operating model for almost all tech-led businesses today, no matter how big or small they are. A loosely coupled, business function-focused system enhances the overall productivity and delivery pipeline and improves governance. Add DevOps to this mix, and the opportunity to build super-apps also unlocks. Dev teams need to know which tools to switch up to achieve this balance. The orchestration of the right frameworks can be achieved to build great experiences, deploy applications faster and leverage new-age innovations, all at once. 
2. Go beyond refactoring: Incorporating ever-changing customer demands into code is by no means an easy task. Even standard upgrades, language runtimes and essential maintenance can be cumbersome. Automated code maintenance, thus, becomes the need of the hour. Take a step beyond traditional code refactoring by breaking it down into small building blocks, maybe with the help of the open-source community. Understanding how these building blocks interact with each other will ensure that they fit better within the larger software ecosystem. 
3. Use IaC: Infrastructure as code is a game-changer, period. So is GitOps. Using IaC and configuration management tools, cloud infrastructure provisioning and configuration can be triggered by a code change. Popular Continuous Integration tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, TravisCI, CircleCI, and Gitlab allow the triggering of required infrastructure based on code artifacts. IaC principles take the most proactive approach for fixing production issues and are worth exploring. 
4. Build intent-based computing: Educate your development teams and engineers about the purpose of the solutions they are building. More often than not, half the problem lies within a lack of clarity and understanding. A clear domain-driven design with the ‘on-demand availability’ model can drastically improve resiliency and performance, thus steadily reducing the tech debt. 

The Right Combination for Success

A combination of automation, modern architecture and proper cloud-based governance will drive the future of computing. While all of this can be challenging to implement alone, having a team of domain experts by your side can help curtain technical debt and bring in positive business impact, one step at a time! 

How are you managing your tech debt? What advice would you share for other enterprises? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!