AWSnative

AWSnative, sometimes written AWS-native, is a term used to describe software architectures and applications designed to run primarily on Amazon Web Services by leveraging AWS-native services and features. The term emphasizes tight integration with the AWS ecosystem, including usage of managed services, event-driven patterns, and serverless options, rather than relying on cloud-agnostic components or self-managed infrastructure.

Core characteristics include compute via Lambda or other managed compute services, storage on DynamoDB or Aurora, object storage on S3, API front ends via API Gateway, messaging with EventBridge, SQS, or SNS, and workflow orchestration through Step Functions. Infrastructure is typically provisioned with infrastructure-as-code tools such as CloudFormation, CDK, or SAM, and security is embedded through IAM, roles, and policies. Observability relies on CloudWatch and X-Ray.

Benefits of an AWSnative approach include rapid development and deployment, reduced operational overhead, automatic scaling, and deep integration with AWS security and compliance controls. Applications can achieve high availability and predictable performance by leveraging AWS-managed services and regional redundancy.

Limitations include potential vendor lock-in, portability concerns in multi-cloud strategies, and the need for specialized AWS expertise to design and optimize architectures. Costs can be harder to forecast without proper governance, especially at scale.

Adoption and use cases: AWSnative patterns are common in startups and enterprises migrating workloads to AWS, including serverless web apps, real-time data processing pipelines, analytics platforms, and SaaS backends. It is a descriptive term rather than a formal AWS product or certification.