Cloud-native Deploy-ability: An Analysis of Required Features of Deployment Technologies to Deploy Arbitrary Cloud-native Applications

The adoption of cloud computing combined with DevOps enables companies to react to new market requirements more rapidly and fosters the use of automation technologies. This influences the way software solutions are built, which is why the concept of cloud-native applications has emerged over the last few years to build highly scalable applications, and to automatically deploy and run them in modern cloud environments. However, there is currently no reference work clearly stating the features that a deployment technology must offer to support the deployment of arbitrary cloud-native applications. In this paper, we derive three essential features for deployment technologies based on the current cloud-native research and characteristics discussed therein. The presented features can be used to compare and categorize existing deployment technologies, and they are intended to constitute a first step towards a comprehensive framework to assess deployment technologies.