Exploring Challenges in Developing Edge-Cloud-Native Applications Across Multiple Business Domains

A new research paper titled 'Exploring Challenges in Developing Edge-Cloud-Native Applications Across Multiple Business Domains' provides a critical, practice-informed look at the hurdles facing modern software teams. Authored by Pawissanutt Lertpongrujikorn, Hai Duc Nguyen, Juahn Kwon, and Mohsen Amini Salehi, the study is based on in-depth interviews with professionals across IT, finance, healthcare, education, and industrial sectors. It reveals that despite the promise of edge-cloud convergence for low-latency, scalable services, practitioners face significant complexity that hampers adoption. The core finding is a shift in priority: developers now value productivity, Quality of Service (QoS), and platform usability more than traditional concerns like cost or migration ease.

The study identifies three primary pain points: fragmented development toolchains, the steep learning curve at the cloud-network boundary, and the operational overhead of managing distributed compute and networking. These challenges are particularly acute for professionals from non-technical business domains trying to leverage these advanced architectures. The research concludes that there is a pressing need for operationally simplified, SLA-aware, and developer-centric platforms that can streamline the entire application lifecycle—from development to deployment and maintenance. This work offers crucial insights for cloud providers (like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure) and tooling companies to better align their offerings with the practical realities of enterprise development, pushing the industry toward more seamless cloud-network convergence.