Creating innovation Optimizing business value means that applications can take advantage of the distributed, scalable architecture the cloud platform provides in order to offer the highest levels of flexibility, scalability and reusability. For a cloud native application, this is where true innovation lies to- day. The cloud native application fully exploits the benefits of cloud technology. It is important to recognize that a cloud native application is not defined by where it is run- ning, but rather how it is built. Because a cloud native environment is based on containerization, it is not phys- ically tied to a specific hardware or operating system. Therefore, cloud native applications are designed to work on a variety of cloud environment. Open source cloud native applications If you are going to adapt an agile continuous integration and continuous delivery model for your cloud applica- tions, you need to explore innovative tools and tech- niques that apply to the full lifecycle of applications cre- ation and deployment. Most of the most important inno- vations in native cloud tools are based on open source technologies from a vibrant community of contributors. For example, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, focused on projects designed to create and deploy cloud- native applications and services. The foundation’s work has resulted in a number of projects (completed or under- way), including Helm (for package management), Harbor (a registry), and of course, Kubernetes (for container or- chestration). 34