Understanding the challenges and novel architectural models of multi-cloud native applications – a systematic literature review

Abstract

The evolution of Cloud Computing into a service utility, along with the pervasive adoption of the IoT paradigm, has promoted a significant growth in the need of computational and storage services. The traditional use of cloud services, focused on the consumption of one provider, is not valid anymore due to different shortcomings being the risk of vendor lock-in a critical. We are assisting to a change of paradigm, from the usage of a single cloud provider to the combination of multiple cloud service types, affecting the way in which applications are designed, developed, deployed and operated over such heterogeneous ecosystems. The result is an effective heterogeneity of architectures, methods, tools, and frameworks, copying with the multi-cloud application concept. The goal of this study is manifold. Firstly, it aims to characterize the multi-cloud concept from the application development perspective by reviewing existing definitions of multi-cloud native applications in the literature. Secondly, we set up the basis for the architectural characterization of these kind of applications. Finally, we highlight several open research issues drawn up from the analysis carried out. To achieve that, we have conducted a systematic literature review (SLR), where, a large set of primary studies published between 2011 and 2021 have been studied and classified. The in-depth analysis has revealed five main research trends for the improvement of the development and operation DevOps lifecycle of “multi-cloud native applications”. The paper finishes with directions for future work and research challenges to be addressed by the software community.

Access Control Design Practice and Solutions in Cloud-Native Architecture: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…Several studies in their analysis support those strategies mentioned. Alonso et al [ 44 ] carried out an in-depth literature review on the difficulties of multi-cloud native applications, focusing on authentication, authorization, or privacy methods to handle security-related issues. By sharing data across several providers, using multiple clouds considerably increases the benefit of data confidentiality while overcoming the four significant drawbacks of cloud computing for data storage: loss of availability, corruption of data, loss of privacy, and vendor lock-in.…”

Cloud-Native Workload Orchestration at the Edge: A Deployment Review and Future Directions

“…It should be noted that the area of systems based on cloud-native computing principles is evolving rapidly to meet the shifting demands of the industry. Current challenges and open issues include unified orchestration for heterogeneous systems, federated management domains, leveraging artificial intelligence for automatic resource management and data interoperability [ 32 , 33 ]. Interestingly, the surveys also acknowledge that one of the main challenges is applying the existing cloud-native principles to the entire edge-to-cloud continuum.…”

Security in Cloud-Native Services: A Survey

“…Understanding the challenges and novel architectural models of multi-cloud native applications: a systematic literature review [36].…”

“…Despite the fact that there have been numerous surveys that explore various aspects of security (such as requirements, challenges, and solutions) in the cloud [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], there have been none that focus on security from the perspective of cloud-native services. In fact, although these two terms are closely related, there are some distinct differences.…”