cloudfriendly

Cloudfriendly is a term used in information technology to describe software, services, or architectures that are well suited for operation in cloud environments. It emphasizes compatibility with cloud platforms, scalability, resilience, and cost efficiency, while avoiding unnecessary or costly changes to existing systems.

Core characteristics include stateless or loosely coupled components, API-first design, containerization or serverless deployment, and the use of managed cloud services. Cloudfriendly systems typically support automated scaling, fault tolerance, and continuous deployment, with strong emphasis on observability and declarative provisioning.

Design practices commonly associated with cloudfriendly development include modular microservices, externalized state with cloud storage, idempotent operations, and infrastructure as code. They adopt cloud-native patterns such as event-driven messaging, queues, and asynchronous processing to handle variable workloads.

Benefits of cloudfriendly design include easier regional scaling, improved resilience, faster delivery cycles, and alignment with cloud economics. Potential downsides include vendor lock-in risks, complexity in multi-cloud setups, and security or governance considerations when using managed services.

Examples of cloudfriendly approaches include applications designed for one or more cloud platforms with minimal modifications, services packaged for container orchestration, and serverless components that interface with managed databases and messaging services.

In practice, cloudfriendly sits between legacy on-premises architectures and fully cloud-native transformations. It is related to concepts such as cloud-native, cloud-first, and multi-cloud strategies, and is often used to describe pragmatic paths toward cloud adoption.