So far, you have learned about various aspects of solution architecture, architecture attributes, and architecting principals. Since the cloud is a developing trend, you will see different examples from popular cloud technologies. The public cloud is becoming one of the primary destinations to host applications, so it's important not to undervalue the preposition and migration method in the cloud. In this chapter, you will learn about the various aspects of the cloud and develop cloud thinking, which will also help you understand the upcoming chapters better.

As you learned in Chapter 1, The Meaning of Solution Architecture, cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the web, and you pay as you utilize resources. The public cloud helps you acquire technologies such as compute, storage, network, and databases on an as-needed basis, instead of buying and maintaining your own data centers.

With cloud computing, the cloud vendor manages and maintains the technology infrastructure in a secure environment and organizations access these resources over the web to develop and run their applications. An IT resource's capacity can go up or down instantly and organizations only pay for what they use.

Now, the cloud is becoming essential for every enterprise strategy. Almost every organization increases its spending in IT, and on top of saving cost, they convert upfront capital expenditures into operational expenditures. A lot of startups born in the last decade started in the cloud and were fueled by cloud infrastructure for rapid growth.

As an enterprise moving to the cloud, they are focusing on cloud migration strategy and hybrid cloud first before becoming cloud-native.

In this chapter, you will learn about the various strategies of cloud migrations and hybrid cloud by covering the following topics:

• Benefits of cloud-native architecture
• Creating a cloud migration strategy
• Steps for cloud migration
• Creating a hybrid cloud architecture
• Designing a cloud-native architecture
• Popular public cloud choices

By the end of this chapter, you will learn about the benefits of the cloud and be able to design cloud-native architecture. You will understand different cloud migration strategies and steps. You will also learn about hybrid cloud design and popular public cloud providers.