Ah yes, another day, another framework from Redmond telling us how to “plan cloud-native solutions.” Spoiler: it’s less about unicorns in the cloud and more about avoiding the classic “we migrated, it all caught fire, and now the CFO wants to know why the bill looks like a phone number.”
Step One: Define “Success” (Good Luck With That)
Microsoft politely suggests you start with “business objectives.” Sounds nice until you realise your marketing team’s “objective” is launch a new app by next Tuesday while IT’s “objective” is not crying in the server room again.
Tip: write it all down. And then pin it to the wall so you can laugh at how wrong it all went six months later.
Step Two: Requirements – Functional vs. “Oops We Forgot”
Yes, there are functional requirements (what the app does) and non-functional ones (how fast, how secure, how resilient). The trick? Everyone forgets the non-functional until the system collapses under load. Nothing screams enterprise readiness like an app that works perfectly in the lab but dies as soon as more than seven users log in.
Step Three: Architecture – Monoliths, Microservices, and Other Religious Wars
The framework recommends reviewing architectures. Monolith? Microservices? Event-driven? Pick your poison.
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Monolith: easier to start, but you’ll be laughed at in conferences.
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Microservices: trendy, but suddenly you need a PhD in distributed debugging just to track a login request.
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Event-driven: brilliant until you spend three weeks trying to figure out why an event went missing somewhere in “the pipeline.”
Pro tip: Don’t chase buzzwords — unless you enjoy explaining to management why “resilient microservices” translated into 4 a.m. calls and five-digit Azure bills.
Step Four: Integrations – Where Good Intentions Go to Die
On paper, integrating with legacy systems looks easy: “just connect it.” In reality, the “legacy database” is a half-documented monster written in COBOL, and nobody who understands it has been seen since 1998.
But sure, put “integrations” in your plan. It’ll make you feel better.
Step Five: Regions and Services – Azure’s Pick-and-Mix Aisle
Choose your services, choose your regions. Sounds like a shopping trip until you notice every new tick box adds another line item to your bill. Multi-region for resilience? Absolutely — but also say hello to multi-region invoices.
Step Six: Deployment and DevOps – The Mythical Unicorn Team
Yes, DevOps. CI/CD pipelines. Canary releases. Blue-green deployments. All marvellous… if you actually have people who know what they’re doing. Otherwise, you’ll discover the “pipeline” is a bash script written by Dave in Accounting who once watched a YouTube tutorial.
Step Seven: Rollback Plans (Or the Lack Thereof)
This is my personal favourite. Everyone nods sagely when you say “rollback strategy.” Few actually test it. And then, when the new version torches production, your “rollback” is basically everyone staring at Jenkins and praying.
What Microsoft Forgot to Tell You
Here’s the stuff you actually need:
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Observability: not just logs, but real tracing and metrics. Otherwise, you’re flying blind with a plane full of passengers.
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Chaos testing: try turning things off on purpose. Better you than the universe.
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Security at every level: encryption, secrets management, identity. Otherwise, congratulations — you’ve just built a very scalable breach.
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Team culture: cloud-native isn’t just tech, it’s people. If your devs still think production is “someone else’s problem,” good luck with that.
The Real-World Checklist
Before you dive in, ask yourself (and your team, preferably before the pub):
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Do we actually know what “success” looks like, or are we winging it?
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Are non-functional requirements written down, or are we waiting for them to bite us later?
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Is our “architecture choice” based on use case… or because we read a blog post about Netflix?
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Who’s going to maintain integrations — and does that person still work here?
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Have we run the numbers on cost, or are we assuming Azure is cheaper “because cloud”?
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Do we have actual DevOps pipelines, or is it Jenkins held together with duct tape?
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Have we tested rollback with real workloads, or just said “we’ll figure it out”?
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Can we monitor what’s happening in production, or are we relying on angry customer emails?
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Have we rehearsed an outage drill, or is “chaos” just how we normally operate?
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Finally: is the team actually ready for cloud-native, or are we just renaming “lift and shift” to sound smarter?
The Verdict
Microsoft’s framework is a decent map — but remember, the map is not the territory. In real life:
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Plans will break.
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Costs will explode.
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Rollbacks will fail.
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Someone will blame “the cloud.”
And yet, going cloud-native is still the right direction — provided you walk into it with eyes open, humour intact, and maybe a stiff drink in hand.
Best regards,
Alex
and “yes” if you would follow me at Q&A – personaly thx.
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