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http://pivotal.io/platform-as-a-service/migrating-to-cloud-native-application-architectures-ebook[Cloud Native] is a style of application development that encourages easy adoption of best practices in the areas of continuous delivery and value-driven development. A related discipline is that of building http://12factor.net/[12-factor Apps] in which development practices are aligned with delivery and operations goals, for instance by using declarative programming and management and monitoring. Spring Cloud facilitates these styles of development in a number of specific ways and the starting point is a set of features that all components in a distributed system either need or need easy access to when required.

Many of those features are covered by http://projects.spring.io/spring-boot[Spring Boot], which we build on in Spring Cloud. Some more are delivered by Spring Cloud as two libraries: Spring Cloud Context and Spring Cloud Commons. Spring Cloud Context provides utilities and special services for the `ApplicationContext` of a Spring Cloud application (bootstrap context, encryption, refresh scope and environment endpoints). Spring Cloud Commons is a set of abstractions and common classes used in different Spring Cloud implementations (eg. Spring Cloud Netflix vs. Spring Cloud Consul).