We're pleased to announce the general availability of Graal Cloud Native (GCN) v3.8.5.
GCN is a curated set of open source Micronaut® framework modules that simplify multicloud application development and are designed from the ground up to be compiled ahead-of-time with GraalVM Native Image. GCN enables you to easily build portable cloud native Java microservices that start instantly and use fewer resources to reduce compute costs.
Research shows that cloud native and multicloud are becoming more prevalent. As per Gartner and IDC, the majority of new applications will be cloud native by 2025. According to Oracle’s second annual multicloud survey results, multicloud is the new reality with 98% of enterprises surveyed already using or planning to use multicloud. Cost optimization, cloud vendor lock-in concerns, and workload portability are among the top motivators and challenges for multicloud.
Multicloud Portability
Today, building cloud native applications requires the use of cloud-proprietary APIs and libraries. As a result, cloud native applications are tied to the cloud platform and need to be rewritten to deploy and run on another cloud platform.
With GCN, you can write applications once and run them on any public cloud - Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP)*, and Azure*. GCN modules provide platform-independent libraries for a set of core public cloud services including object storage, secret management, streaming, logging, and more. GCN enables you to easily deploy and run the same application on multiple public clouds, and thus prevents cloud lock-in.
Faster and cheaper
Cost optimization is one of the biggest motivators for enterprises running applications in the cloud. GCN applications compiled by GraalVM Native Image start up to 100x faster, operate at peak performance immediately, and require less memory and CPU. As a result, GCN applications need fewer resources to run at scale, and help you meet your cost optimization goals.
Developer Productivity
You can reduce development time with out-of-the-box cloud service integrations and compile-time validation that detects errors at build time, not runtime. Micronaut improves Java developer productivity by detecting errors at compile time instead of runtime, and using annotations instead of runtime reflection.
GCN also provides tooling to make it easy to develop Micronaut applications in VS Code including auto-completion for code and configuration files. The tooling makes it easy to transition from local development to cloud-based development from within VS Code.
You can use the GCN Launcher to generate multicloud application starters to quickly get started with multicloud development.
Open Source
The source code for the GCN modules is available in their corresponding Micronaut Framework projects. The GCN CLI is also open source, available in the GCN repo on GitHub.
Commercial Support
You can run GCN applications in production on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with full commercial support at no additional charge. Since GCN modules are also tested on AWS, GCP*, and Azure*, you can rest assured your application will run on multiple clouds with no code changes.
* coming soon
To get started with GCN, try one of our Hands-on Labs or use the Getting Started guide. You can learn more about GCN by visiting https://www.graal.cloud/gcn/ .
Micronaut® is a registered trademark of Object Computing, Inc. Use is for referential purposes and does not imply any endorsement or affiliation with any third-party product.
Reference:
1. Oracle's second annual multicloud survey results
2. Gartner Says Cloud Will Be the Centerpiece of New Digital Experiences
4. Cloud-Native Development: Ready or Not? State of Cloud Application Development Report by OutSystems
Sachin Pikle is a Product Strategy Director for GraalVM and Graal Development Kit for Micronaut in Oracle Labs.