The document outlines a vendor-neutral reference architecture for a cloud native digital enterprise, emphasizing the cultural and technological changes required for successful cloud adoption. It discusses the importance of agile practices, API-led integration, and self-service developer portals in creating effective digital architectures. Additionally, it highlights the significance of enterprise integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and security tooling in enhancing productivity and compliance within cloud native environments.

1. Reference Architecture for a Cloud Native
Digital Enterprise
June, 2021

2. Hello!
Lakmal Warusawithana
Senior Director - Solutions Architecture
lakmal@wso2.com

3. Cloud Native
What is cloud native?

4. Cloud native is the combination of a
philosophical approach and a set of
technologies that allow organizations to
build, deploy, and operate software
applications more frequently, resiliently,
and reliably.

5. Culture is an important component that is
mostly ignored when describing or
planning for cloud native.
5

6. Teams which are Autonomous and small
(or correct in size), Releases that are
Frequent, Practices which are Automated
are some of the culture aspects that are
required to make becoming Cloud Native
successful
6

7. Cloud Native Landscape
Technology landscape for cloud native

8. 8

9. Cloud Native Digital Architectures
Technology and architecture patterns for a digital enterprise

10. In an era of digital transformation, (digital)
enterprises are looking for fast innovation
through effective collaboration to deliver
more value to their customers with
dramatically less effort.
10

11. Digital Transformation requires business
services to be easily consumable - APIs
provide this. APIs alone may not be able to
connect to every endpoint that exists - API
led Integration completes this need.
11

12. Cloud native does frequent releases. It
requires agile requirements gathering,
design, architecture reviews, development,
testing, and deployment.
12

13. The combination of cloud native
technologies along with an API-led
integration platform creates an effective
architecture i.e.,
a Cloud Native Digital Enterprise

14. Reference Architecture: A Cloud Native
Digital Enterprise
Vendor/technology-neutral reference architecture

15. Reference Architecture for a Cloud Native Digital Enterprise
●
15

16. The control plane is the central location
where policies for services are defined.
These can be usage policies, security
policies etc.

17. API gateways play a key role by enforcing
policies that are defined in the control and
management plane. The gateway falls into
the data plane.

18. The data plane can be segregated into two
which are the base services and the
integration services.
18

19. A self-service developer portal is
important to build an effective API
ecosystem. This developer portal is what
will broaden out into an API Marketplace
portal.
19

20. The API marketplace is key to building an
API ecosystem by enabling multiple
parties to list and offer their APIs in a
single place.
20

21. Dashboards and reports help both
business and operations to gain a
360-degree view of the digital business.
21

22. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS
A combination of cloud-centric integration technologies with the API
management capabilities

23. A combination of cloud-centric
integration technologies with the API
management capabilities provide a
significant platform, enterprise iPaaS, to
increase productivity by having agility,
flexibility, and scalability through
automation and services.

24. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS 24

25. API Lifecycle Management, Security and
the built-in API Observability tools
provides the necessary tooling foundation
for digital transformation. The API
Marketplace provides that common
ground for promoting APIs.
25

26. Security tooling in the platform brings in
the capability to define security policies,
manage tokens and protect APIs.

27. No-code/Low-code integration provides
out-of-the-box, cookie-cutter templates
for application integration with
drag-and-drop components.
27

28. Continuous Integration/Continuous
Delivery pipelines ensure fast rollout of
services while ensuring proper building,
testing and deployment in an automated
manner.
28

29. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS Architecture

30. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS Hybrid
Architecture
Pragmatic way to scale

31. Compliance to data regulations, inability
to move legacy systems may require
some of the integration and enforcement
to happen on-prem.
31

32. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS Hybrid Architecture
●
32
32

33. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS Service
Mesh Architecture
Service Mesh to address the fallacies of distributed computing

34. When Decomposing a monolith to
microservices, it is required to address the
fallacies of distributed computing as part
of their application logic.

35. Addressing these in each and every
microservice created will be too complex
and too tedious.
35

36. SideCar 36

37. Cloud Native Enterprise iPaaS Service Mesh Architecture
●
37

38. Gateway convergence 38

39. Read More
● Reference Architecture for a Cloud Native Digital Enterprise
This document describes a vendor/technology-neutral reference architecture for a cloud native digital
enterprise. The architecture defined in this paper can be mapped into different cloud-native platforms
(Kubernetes and service mesh), different cloud providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google
GCP), and infrastructure services to perform the implementation. These reference implementations will be
covered in separate papers.
● The Role of EiPaaS in Enterprise Architecture: Part 1
The Role of EiPaaS in Enterprise Architecture: Part 2
Enterprise architecture has evolved in parallel with changes in how organizations operate and advances in
technology — serving as the heart of the technology landscape, the connection between business and
technology, and the driving force in generating value streams. However, to achieve those objectives, an
enterprise architecture requires a future-proof integration platform and that’s where EiPaaS becomes the
neural system of a digitally-driven organization.
39

40. Read More
● Reference Implementation for a Cloud-Native Digital Enterprise
This paper presents a reference implementation for a cloud-native digital enterprise architecture described
in the Reference Architecture for a Cloud-Native Digital Enterprise. We will focus on an implementation
using Kubernetes and WSO2’s API-led integration platform.
● How to fail at Cloud Native
Every organization wants to move into cloud native to increase innovation and productivity. Many
organizations are failed in the cloud native journey by only adapting a set of cloud platforms, tools, and
techniques. But Cloud native is more than architecture or technology. It is a philosophical approach and a
culture change that allows organizations to utilize the benefits of all modern technologies like microservice
architecture, containers, Kubernetes, and CI/CD.
40

41. wso2.com
Thanks!