Startups are the primary drivers behind the tech disruptions happening across practically every industry. And that also includes the tech sector too.

IT departments all over the world now take advantage of hundreds of automation, DevOps, SecOps, or container orchestration tools created by startups and cloud native is arguably the hottest area for innovation today.

Companies like Netflix and Uber are using the cloud native approach, running several hundred services in production and deploying constantly. That’s how they can respond to the changing market conditions faster, easily update parts of their applications, and scale them to match the demand in a cost-effective way.

Keep on reading to learn more about this exciting field and see which startups are on their way to dominating the cloud native landscape.

What is Cloud Native?

Cloud native computing is all about building and running scalable applications in the cloud - be it public, private, or hybrid cloud platforms.

Cloud native is based on several different technologies and capabilities that increase the agility and efficiency of IT teams - from containerization to microservices.

And it’s definitely on the rise. In the 2020 edition of The State of Enterprise Open Source report, 56% of surveyed IT leaders said that their use of containers will increase in the next year.

A survey from RedHat showed the widespread consumer adoption of the container orchestration solution Kubernetes (88%) - also in production environments (74%)!

In a survey from O’Reilly, 61% of respondents said they’ve been using microservices for a year or more and most of them (74%) have teams that own their build-test-deploy-maintain phases of the software development lifecycle.

Cloud Native Architecture - 4 Things to Remember

Cloud native is all about optimizing system architectures for the specific capabilities of the cloud. Here are a few key principles driving the cloud native movement:

1. Designing for automation - using the cloud’s potential for automating the infrastructure, deployment processes (Continuous Integration - CI /Continuous Delivery - CD), applicating scaling, and recovery.

2. Stateless components - including scaling up, repairing failed component instances, rolling back in the case of bad deployment, and load balancing.

3. Managed services - cloud providers offer managed services for all kinds of functionalities to free developers from managing the backend software or infrastructure.

4. Defence-in-depth approach - this is the leading security principle in cloud native architectures.

Key Cloud Native Benefits for Startups & MVPs

Cloud native technologies transform how startups develop brand-new digital products and architect their mission-critical infrastructures to prepare for the future.

If you’re a SaaS startup, betting on the cloud is a natural choice - you need your application to be available everywhere and to everyone.

The flexibility, scalability, and reliability of cloud services make them essential to startups looking for agility and support in their path to rapid growth.

Now that you know why cloud native is so important for startups, here are the key players on the cloud native scene that make this cloud computing approach accessible to companies of all sizes.

7 Disruptive US-Based Cloud Native Startups to Have on Your Radar

1. GitLab

Location: San Francisco, CA

Founded: 2014

Funding: $414.2 million

Revenue: $230 million (in 2021)

Users: 30 million

An undeniable leader in the DevOps space, GitLab is a unicorn that was initially founded as a web-based git repository manager. Over time, this open-source tool grew into a full-lifecycle DevOps platform used by small startups and large enterprises to build smooth CI/CD pipelines and security processes. GitLab holds around a 30% share of the source code management market!

2. CircleCI

Location: San Francisco, CA

Founded: 2011

Funding: $315 million

Revenue: $50 million (in 2020)

Users: 58,000 organizations

CircleCI has won the hearts of developers and investors alike for developing its CI/CD in strides. According to Enlyft, CircleCI has grabbed over 17% of the Continuous Delivery (CI) total market share. Closing its last series at $100 million, the company will surely make an impact in 2022.

3. Volterra

Location: Santa Clara, CA

Founded: 2017

Funding: $50 million

Revenue: $3.6 million (in 2021)

Volterra helps DevOps teams manage the operational, security, and performance issues that crop up when you run apps across distributed cloud and edge environments. It has two game-changing products: VoltStack which uses Kubernetes APIs to deploy distributed applications in multi-cloud, and VoltMesh that delivers high-performance networking and zero-trust security features.

4. Netlify

Location: San Francisco, CA

Founded: 2015

Funding: $97.1 million

Users: 800k developers

The startup connects the CI/CD process to your GitHub repository, so once a developer commits new code, it automatically runs and deploys it into the application. The startup went through five lucrative funding rounds, raising a total of $97.1 with 17 core team members. More than 15k companies are using Nelify - which is around 2.69% of the software development tools market share.

5. Istio

Location: San Francisco, CA

Founded: 2017

This open platform offers teams a consistent method of connecting, controlling, and securing microservices. In a survey from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Istio was at the top as the preferred service mesh project. Istio founders are also behind Tetrate, another cloud native company recognized as one of the 2021 Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing by Gartner.

6. DataDog

Location: New York, NY

Founded: 2010

Funding: $147.9 million

Revenue: $270.5 million (Q3 2021)

This monitoring platform was designed specifically for applications running in the cloud. Teams can get all kinds of data from servers, containers, databases, and third-party services together and make their entire stack fully observable. In 2019, Datadog acquired the AI-based analytics platform Madumbo to empower users with new monitoring capabilities.

7. LaunchDarkly

Location: Oakland, CA

Founded: 2014

Funding: $330.3 million

This emerging unicorn startup offers a rich feature management platform that helps teams to develop and deploy code even if the feature isn’t ready to be released to all users yet. It’s the dream come true of every startup where engineering, product, and marketing teams struggle to collaborate in a fast-paced environment. So far, LaunchDarkly managed to grab some 3.52% of the Continuous Delivery market share and was listed #47 in Forbes’ Cloud 100.

Wrap up

Cloud native technologies are on their way to transforming the cloud landscape. As more and more companies turn to the cloud not only to migrate applications but to build new products using containers or microservices, we can expect these startups to expand their offering.

Are you looking for expert advice about cloud native? Reach out to us - we help companies to take advantage of modern cloud technologies, increase their operational efficiency and build a solid competitive advantage.