‘Cloud First’ Apps

Dada cites three main challenges to developing cloud-first applications:

•    They require a set of skills that not every IT organization possesses;
•    Building applications from scratch for the cloud is an intensive undertaking; and
•    "It's almost inevitable you will get some level of lock-in to the cloud provider you use," Dada said.

Developers don't build applications for a general cloud, but they do for a specific cloud, adopting some of the provider’s services and mindset. And mitigating techniques, such as abstraction layers, "force you to code for the lowest common denominator."

But there are many advantages.

Cloud-first development yields modern applications that scale well, are resilient, can be developed quickly, and can take advantage of the powerful services cloud providers offer.

"There's a lot of options, and you can decide early on what's the best architecture for the application," Dada said.