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Azure Architecture Blog
11 MIN READ

Cloud Native Platforms: Build

KishoreKumarPattabiraman's avatar
KishoreKumarPattabiraman
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 21, 2026

Part 1 of a three-part series on cloud-native platform engineering on Azure. This part covers the five design disciplines that decide whether a platform scales, and a reference architecture that puts them into one shape.

Audience: Cloud architects, platform engineers, engineering leaders making design decisions Reading time: 8 minutes Series: Cloud Native Platforms. Build, Run, Evolve. This is Part 1 of 3. M...
Published May 21, 2026
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KishoreKumarPattabiraman's avatar
KishoreKumarPattabiraman
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 23, 2026

This article is Part 1 of a three-part series. To continue the journey:

Part 2 — Run: Cloud Native Platforms: Run
Part 3 — Evolve: Cloud Native Platforms: Evolve

The series is structured as Build → Run → Evolve to reflect the natural progression of platform maturity.

If you are in the foundational stage or designing a new platform, continue with Build.
If your platform is already live and your focus is on reliability, scalability, or cost optimization, Run will be most relevant.
If you are evaluating advanced capabilities such as AI integration and long-term evolution, Evolve will be most relevant.

Clinton-Hycinth's avatar
Clinton-Hycinth
Copper Contributor
Oct 31, 2026

Thanks for the post. The reference architecture shows managed identity and private endpoints, but identity and security are not one of the five disciplines in the text. Was that deliberate, for example, covered elsewhere in the series, or do you see security as a property that runs through all five? I am working on Azure hub-and-spoke networking and RBAC, and I would like to understand how you frame it when designing a platform.