In a deployment diagram, internet outside the firewall was depicted using the shape of a cloud. Not until I read Big Switch, Nicholas G. Carr, did I realize the full potential of cloud and what was to come. Fast forwarding 10 years, now we do not think twice before drawing the cloud shape around the complete system to depict how cloud is everywhere. Cloud Native comes naturally for start-ups, but for a lot of enterprises, this is still an uncharted territory. Just doing lift-and-shift is not the right use of cloud, though it may be the first thing most large corporations are doing to mitigate the currency of their data centers or to avoid extension of leases. The power of cloud is seen when we are able to build cloud-native architecture-based applications that are business critical and can drive transformational value. Hence, I have always encouraged my team to gain knowledge on designing and building smarter applications on cloud.Munish, Ajay, and Shyam are part of the core team that has always researched and worked on emerging technologies, using them to solve business problems. They are among the leading experts and consultants on the enterprise digital transformation with a focus on distributed systems using microservices and emerging technologies such as reactive frameworks, open source, and container technology (Dockers and Kubernetes) to name a few. Hence, I encouraged them to work on this book so as to enable the next generation of developers to jump start their journey to cloud-native applications.This book takes a step-by-step approach to understanding, designing, and writing applications for cloud. The authors take you on a learning journey that starts with the concepts, followed by building a small REST service, and then going through the incremental journey of enhancing the service to be cloud native. They cover various aspects of cloud-specific nuances, such as how to discover a service in a distributed architecture and the role played by service discovery tools. You will also learn how to migrate your application to public cloud providers—AWS and Azure. The book covers serverless computing models such as AWS Lamda and Cloud Functions.I encourage you to get the best out of this book to spearhead your application development journey on cloud.

Hari Kishan BurleVice President and Global Head Architecture ServicesWipro Limited