Pivotal defines Spring Cloud as a framework that accelerates cloud-native application development. Today, when we talk about cloud-native applications, the first thing that comes to mind is the ability to deliver software quickly. To meet these demands, we should be able to quickly build new applications and design architectures that are scalable, portable, and prepared to be frequently updated. The tools that provide the mechanisms for containerization and orchestration help us in setting up and maintaining such an architecture. In fact, tools such as Docker or Kubernetes, which we have looked at in previous chapters, allow us to create our own private cloud and run Spring Cloud microservices on it. Although an application does not have to be deployed on a public cloud, it contains all of the most important characteristics of cloud software.
Deploying your Spring application on a public cloud is just a possibility, not a necessity. However...