Gartner defines cloud-native application platforms as those that provide managed application runtime environments for applications and integrated capabilities to manage the life cycle of an application or application component in the cloud environment. They typically enable distributed application deployments and support cloud-native operations — such as elasticity, multitenancy and self-service — without requiring the development team to provision infrastructure or manage containers.

Cloud-native application platforms are designed to facilitate the deployment, runtime execution and management of modern cloud-native or cloud-optimized applications without the need to manage any underlying infrastructure. Also, they are designed to enhance developer productivity, accelerate development and deployment cycles, and increase operational effectiveness by making it easier to scale on demand.