  The evolution of Cloud computing led to a novel breed of applications known
as Cloud-Native Applications (CNAs). However, observing and monitoring these
applications can be challenging, especially if a CNA is bound by compliance
requirements. To address this challenge, we explore the characteristics of CNAs
and how they affect CNAs' observability and compliance. We then construct a
reference architecture for observability and compliance pipelines for CNAs.
Furthermore, we sketch instances of this reference architecture for single- and
multi-cloud deployments. The proposed architecture embeds observability and
compliance into the CNA architecture and adopts a "battery-included" mindset.
This architecture can be applied to small and large CNA deployments in
regulated and non-regulated industries. It allows Cloud practitioners to focus
on what is critical, namely building their products, without being burdened by
observability and compliance requirements. This work may also interest
academics as it provides a building block for generic CNA architectures.
