Communication between distributed software components in a cloud-native application is an important and challenging aspect of cloud-native development. This post introduces a solution to that problem using Virtual Application Networks (VANs).  A VAN can be set up by a developer and used to connect the components of an application that are deployed in different public, private, and edge cloud environments.

Cloud-native development is about writing software in such a way that it can be deployed easily, flexibly, and automatically into the hybrid-cloud ecosystem to take advantage of the scale of the cloud.  A big part of taking advantage of cloud scale is the ability to deploy components of a distributed system in different locations.