7 Ways to Accelerate Cloud Native Development

Summary

• Maintaining a single source of truth for all packages, binaries, and images (like Docker images, Helm charts, and Maven packages) streamlines development, improves governance, and ensures consistency across a polyglot environment.
• Integrate security checks, such as Software Composition Analysis (SCA), early in the development pipeline to prevent using vulnerable software components. This reduces substantial remediation costs and keeps delivery pipelines fast.
• You must create and manage your own private, access-controlled registries for Docker and OCI-compliant images. These registries are key for building immutable images and promoting them through the development pipeline to production.
• Proxying external registries like Docker Hub is critical for speed and reliability, as it eliminates network latency, protects against external disruptions, and enables caching of frequently used base images.
• A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a machine-readable inventory of all application components and their origin, formed from build metadata and SCA. It enhances transparency, helps monitor for vulnerabilities, ensures license compliance, and supports faster incident response.
• Use a dedicated registry to manage Helm charts, which are declarative manifests for Kubernetes applications. This centralizes version control, simplifies dependency management, and provides an auditable history for reliable, large-scale deployments.
• IaC files (using tools like Terraform, Puppet, or Chef) automate provisioning and maintenance of cloud environments. Storing these modules in access-controlled registries alongside application artifacts ensures security, version control, and reusability, strengthening the software supply chain.

Overview

Organizations are moving from monolithic applications to cloud-native architectures to scale faster and accelerate business growth. That means transforming development to more resilient cloud native architectures that can be readily deployed to cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.

What does it mean to be cloud native? Here’s how the Cloud Native Computing Foundation defines it: “Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.”

Put plainly, cloud native solutions make use of technologies that effectively utilize cloud technology infrastructure, and enable the inherent best characteristics of the cloud through:

• Microservice architectures – Applications composed of loosely coupled services that can either self-correct or isolate failure while the remaining services continue to operate.
• Lightweight – Technologies like containers (e.g., Docker) and serverless that can be deployed and terminated quickly on demand.
• Automated Orchestration – Using orchestration technologies such as Kubernetes to distribute and manage application microservices.
• Declarative Configuration – Using infrastructure-as-code technologies to provision cloud environments.
• Elasticity – Leveraging the power of the network to expand and release resources as needed.
• Scalability – Using the reach of worldwide networks to provide concurrent service to and from anywhere.

Speedway to Cloud Native Development

Solutions that enable these 7 practices are essential to accelerate your path to cloud native development:

1. Universal Binary Repository Management

Cloud native is polyglot development – runtimes such as Java, Node.js, Go, Python, and Ruby are readily available, but others like .NET, C/C++, and Rust are options as well. At JFrog, we see half of all our enterprise customers using 12 distinct package types or more. Maintaining a single source of truth for all your packages, binaries, and images is a massive enabler of efficiency and uniform best practices that will streamline all of your development – not just for cloud native apps – and help speed delivery.

This is where a universal binary repository comes in. By consolidating all artifacts (such as Docker images, Helm charts, npm modules, Maven packages, Python wheels, and more) into a single platform, teams gain consistency in versioning, access control, and lifecycle management. Instead of managing silos for each technology, developers can work from one trusted source, reducing duplication and ensuring that dependencies are traceable across projects.

The benefits extend beyond convenience. Centralizing binaries improves visibility and governance, while integrated security features such as scanning and signing ensure that only validated artifacts reach production.

2. Shift Left Security

Helping developers avoid using unacceptably vulnerable software components as early as possible – a shift left strategy – helps speed your apps safely out the door. Helping assure that no build is ever created using open source packages with known vulnerabilities saves substantial remediation costs in advance.

A Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tool can inform developers when any of their code’s dependencies – as well as the transitive dependencies those components rely on – open the app to known security threats. But that vigilance doesn’t stop with your own code. You also must be able to reveal vulnerable components that lurk in any third-party resources – such as base images from a public resource like Docker Hub, where following responsible usage practices is key to reducing risk.

Strategies for Implementing Shift Left Security Practices

To put shift left into practice, teams should focus on embedding automated checks throughout the pipeline. Vulnerability scanning can be triggered on every build, with policies that block risky components before they enter production. Incorporating dependency scanning tools ensures that open-source libraries and their transitive dependencies are verified against known CVEs.

Equally important is enabling developers with the knowledge and tools to act on findings. Security training, paired with clear guidelines for remediation, reduces downstream escalations. Adding role-based access controls, managing secrets properly, and enforcing signed binaries all contribute to a stronger software supply chain. Over time, continuous monitoring and periodic audits help refine these practices so that security becomes a natural part of development, not an afterthought. Embedding security early in the process keeps delivery pipelines fast and resilient by reducing the delays caused by late-stage vulnerability fixes.

3. Private Container Registries

Most cloud native development relies on containerization – even some serverless compute engines, such as AWS Fargate and Google Cloud Run, work with containers. That means you’ll need to be able to create and manage your own private registries for Docker and OCI-compliant images that you can control access to. When those registries are part of a universal binary repository manager, it’s easy to build immutable images that pass through the stages of your development pipeline toward production release.

4. Proxy Docker Hub

The base images you will use from Docker Hub or other public repositories can easily be the more significant portion of your containerized microservice. Ensuring site reliability and speedy access is a vital key to maintaining release velocity, but can face challenges of poor connectivity, slowdowns, and site downtime.

Proxying these external registries helps eliminate network latencies inherent in physical distance or an unstable service connection, and keeps builds running as fast as possible. The proxy also protects against disruption due to connectivity breaks or if the remote site itself is unavailable.

Optimizing Docker Hub Access with a Proxy

While Docker Hub offers a vast library of trusted images, direct reliance can create friction in enterprise pipelines. Network latency, bandwidth limits, and Hub’s pull-rate restrictions are common pain points. Configuring a proxy with a solution like JFrog Container Registry provides a controlled gateway that accelerates builds and ensures teams always pull from a reliable source. Reducing external dependencies is a core enabler of faster, more resilient development, as emphasized in guidance on cloud native applications.

Managing Docker Image Caching

A proxy registry also enables caching of frequently used base images. Instead of re-downloading images like Ubuntu or Alpine from Docker Hub with every build, the proxy serves them instantly from a local cache. This improves efficiency and reduces exposure to external outages or rate throttling. Caching is widely recognized as one of the most effective ways to streamline pipelines, with insights on accelerating cloud native development underscoring how it supports consistency across environments.

Monitoring and Managing Proxy Performance

Setting up a proxy is only the first step — active monitoring ensures it delivers the intended benefits. Tracking cache hit rates, request volumes, and latency helps identify optimization opportunities. For organizations under compliance requirements, proxies also provide an audit trail of every image entering the environment. Strong governance and visibility are essential, and perspectives on cloud native adoption highlight how these practices strengthen both performance and security in enterprise settings.

5. Software Bill of Materials

Metadata stored from your builds and SCA forms the basis of a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) — a machine-readable inventory detailing all the items included in an application and their origin — for every release put into production cloud clusters.

An SBOM makes it easier for developers to understand dependencies across complex projects with many components, monitor for vulnerabilities both known and newly discovered, and ensure license compatibility to reduce legal and financial exposure.

Beyond compliance, SBOMs also enhance transparency by giving organizations a clear picture of what’s inside their software. This visibility is critical for strengthening security, since teams can quickly trace which applications are affected when new vulnerabilities emerge. By treating the SBOM as a living document, developers can reduce blind spots and maintain confidence in the integrity of each release.

Creating and maintaining SBOMs effectively requires the right tools and practices. Automated generation during builds ensures accuracy, while integration with vulnerability scanners helps keep the inventory up to date as threats evolve. Many organizations also adopt policies for versioning SBOMs alongside the software itself, so that every deployment is backed by a verifiable record of its components. Together, these practices turn SBOMs into a foundation for both secure development and faster incident response.

6. Helm Chart Registries

Helm charts – declarative manifests for your containerized apps – help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application. Container images, Helm charts and Kubernetes go hand in hand is a common trio of technologies used by organizations adopting  cloud native development. With a Helm Chart registry/repository alongside your other components your K8s applications can be deployed easily and reliably.

Importance of Using Helm Chart Registries

A dedicated Helm Chart registry ensures teams have a centralized, version-controlled location for their charts. This consistency helps streamline collaboration across development and operations teams, simplifies dependency management, and provides an auditable history of every change. By treating Helm charts like any other build artifact, enterprises can align Kubernetes deployments with governance and traceability practices that support reliable, large-scale cloud-native delivery.

Common Challenges and Troubleshooting in Helm Chart Registries

Despite their benefits, Helm registries are not without hurdles. Misconfigured access controls can lead to unauthorized use, while dependency mismatches across chart versions can break deployments. Network latency between the registry and the Kubernetes cluster is another common bottleneck, often overlooked until applications scale. To mitigate these issues, teams should enforce strict role-based access, maintain clear versioning practices, and monitor registry health to detect synchronization errors early. Strong visibility and governance — both highlighted in strategies for cloud native adoption — are just as essential when managing Helm registries at enterprise scale.

7. Infrastructure-as-Code Registries

Infrastructure-as-code configuration files are an essential part of your cloud native artifact ecosystem. IaC tools like Terraform, Puppet, and Chef help automate the provisioning and maintenance of the cloud environments where your Kubernetes applications will run. Your IaC modules are a key part of your software supply chain and software delivery into production K8s, so you will need to be able to maintain access-controlled registries for these files.

How IaC Works: Declarative vs. Imperative Approaches

IaC follows two primary models for describing infrastructure. In the declarative approach, engineers define the desired end state — for example, specifying that a cluster should always have three worker nodes. The tool then ensures that reality matches the specification, automatically reconciling drift over time. By contrast, the imperative approach requires developers to provide step-by-step instructions for provisioning, such as creating networks first, then servers, then load balancers. Declarative IaC is more common in modern DevOps pipelines because it provides reproducibility and resilience at scale.

Benefits of Managing Infrastructure as Code

By treating infrastructure like source code, teams gain version control, collaboration, and repeatability. IaC reduces manual configuration errors, accelerates environment setup, and ensures consistency across staging, testing, and production. It also supports compliance by creating an auditable history of every change. When stored in a registry alongside application artifacts, IaC configurations become part of the same trusted supply chain, strengthening both governance and speed of delivery.

Tools for Implementing IaC

A range of tools support IaC in different environments. Terraform is widely adopted for its provider ecosystem and declarative model, while AWS CloudFormation serves as a native option for managing AWS resources. Puppet and Chef, though originally configuration management tools, also support infrastructure provisioning with more imperative workflows. Whichever tool is chosen, storing modules in registries with access controls and versioning ensures that critical infrastructure definitions are secure, discoverable, and easily reusable across teams.

Accelerating Cloud Native Development with the JFrog Platform

Cloud native success isn’t about adopting one tool — it’s about integrating the right practices across your entire software supply chain. From managing binaries and private registries to shifting security left, generating SBOMs, and scaling Kubernetes with Helm and IaC, these seven practices create the foundation for faster, more resilient development.

The JFrog Platform brings them together in a single, unified solution. With Artifactory, Xray, and CI/CD integrations working seamlessly, enterprises gain end-to-end visibility, security, and automation across every stage of cloud native delivery. By standardizing on the JFrog Platform, you can accelerate releases, strengthen compliance, and scale innovation without slowing down.

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