Microservices architecture is an existing development architecture that is growing in popularity. Find out what it is and why businesses are slowly recognizing the prowess of microservices.
When a business builds a web application, its first concern is the agility and cost of the development process. That is why most startups prefer the fastest and most cost-effective way of building new applications.
Fortunately, these are features that microservices architecture has to offer. This development architecture describes a new way of designing software applications that focuses on independently deployable services.
Many organizations are seeing the potential of microservices and gearing to adopt them alongside other new architectural paradigms. But what could microservices architecture be? How do businesses benefit from it?
What is Microservices Architecture
Microservices architecture is an app architecture gaining reputation within the tech community. It is when a single complex application is composed of small services. Thus where “microservices” coined its term.
Before microservices, there existed another architecture used. It is called monolithic architecture. Let us briefly discuss monolithic architecture to illustrate how microservices address the former’s setbacks in development.
In a monolithic architecture, the entire software is designed to be self-contained. It means that all the components are interconnected and interdependent with each other.
You can see this type of architecture as a typical design pattern for e-commerce. What’s good about monolithic architecture is that it has a linear development.
Also, it is simple to scale. You can simply run multiple copies of the application behind the load balancer.
However, since all its components are interconnected and interdependent, it blocks continuous development. Let’s say you want to improve the product services of your e-commerce web application.
You need to test and deploy the whole system to make changes. In addition, monolithic architecture is not language neutral. If you want to change your current programming language, your development team must write the whole system again.
These problems are what Microservices are solving. With this architectural design, you scale better, develop faster, and deploy quickly. What’s even better is that you can use different languages for every service.
You might be skeptical about microservices being independent of each other and can possibly ruin the entire system. Even though the services are responsible for their discrete tasks, they still communicate with each other through APIs. Let’s explore more about how microservices work.
How is Microservices Architecture used?
Microservices architecture is not a new thing in the tech industry. As a matter of fact, big-name companies use microservice architecture in their applications—companies such as Uber, Netflix, Amazon, Comcast Cable, etc.
These organizations use microservices differently but share one goal to break up monolithic apps into smaller components. Here are some microservices architecture examples:
- Media Content – You can store video assets and images in scalable object storage systems. These are served directly to the users through desktop or mobile devices.
- Data Processing – Extend cloud support to your existing modular data processing service.
- Website migration – You can safely migrate to a container-based microservices platform if your website is currently in a monolithic platform.
- Transaction and invoices – Since microservices architecture allows independent services, you can separate payment and processing as an independent unit. This way, you can still accept payment even if invoicing ceases to work.
How do businesses benefit from Microservices Architecture?
Small Components
Businesses benefit greatly from Microservices Architecture, especially now that many new technologies support this design. Here are some of the microservice benefits that you will convince you:
By definition, microservices mean that a complex application is broken down into multiple manageable components or services. With that, your team of developers can quickly deploy, tweak, and redeploy each component independently without compromising the whole system.
Improved Fault Isolation
When an error occurs in one of the services, the application will not stop functioning. Furthermore, you can easily detect which service has a problem and focus the efforts on the area. Once fixed, you can redeploy that particular component alone and not necessarily the entire application.
Built for Business
Since this application consists of small components, you can have small teams of developers work on different service boundaries. This approach is a less time-consuming process and makes it easier to scale up the development effort if the need arises.
Decentralized
A decentralized system is one of the highlights of microservices architecture; it is an inclusive way of designing an application. Microservices do not require a single technology, platform, or programming language. In short, centralized governance is not optimal.
Getting Started with Microservices Architecture
Now that we know the identity of microservices, their uses, and how businesses can benefit from them. If you think that microservices may be best for your business, you may need to migrate your existing platform or start a new project. But how do you get started with microservices?
Worry not because there are common themes that organizations have adopted. Although there are no standard or defined principles for building better with microservices architecture, these may still sound promising.
Decompose
One of the things that you need to do before you start building is to identify and define your business capabilities. Here are examples of the business capabilities of an online shop application:
- Inventory management
- Order management
- Product catalog
- Product reviews management
- User management
Once you identify these capabilities, you can start building services corresponding to each. You can have a team of one or two expert developers to build each service.
Design the Services Intricately
In building the service, make sure that you clearly define what to expose. Also, decide on what protocols you should use to interact with the service. Hide all complexities from the client side and disclose only relevant details.
Decentralize
To decentralize would mean that teams who build the service will take responsibility and care for everything related to that service. That would include the development, deployment, maintenance, and support.
With that, there is no need for a separate support or maintenance team. When a developer needs to make changes in the services, there is no need to submit a request. They can check the code and work on it themselves.
Design your Software Application with Microservices Architecture
And there you have it, Microservices Architecture for your existing or future business venture.
Even though big companies are taking advantage of the benefits of microservices, small businesses are still more comfortable with a monolithic architecture. Some organizations might observe specific issues with monolithic as they build more updates.
As the application updates more often, development also increases in complexity. At that point, you’ll need to consider microservices.
However, choosing between Microservices and Monolithic always depends on your business model and strategy. Either way is fine as long as the architecture; the approach is to your advantage.
To have a proper transition, you’ll need expert developers on your team to build the application quickly. Luckily, you’ll find software development companies that offer affordable software development services.
Full Scale offers software development services fast and affordably. Our company has the best developers you can ever find. Our teams consist of highly skilled programmers knowledgeable in different languages.
All you need to do is contact us and schedule an appointment.
