What is Microservices Architecture and Why Should Enterprises Care?

What is Microservices Architecture and Why Should Enterprises Care?

A large single upright block of code that acts as a pillar for the entire application is a monolith structure that is getting obsolete with time. It is like that Jenga game that falls off entirely when even a single block gets displaced. The newer form of a solution, i.e., the microservices architecture is finally taking over that tend to break the single upright block into several modules that can function independently and are loosely coupled.

Monolith: One large code block + one database = Single application Microservices: Loosely coupled code blocks + Respective databases = Single

application Which means, microservices is the same Jenga block that miraculously stays intact even when one of the structures is disturbed.

This architecture is a disruptive software development service that is making news in the tech world as it promises to cater to scalability, time to market, and enterprise agility needs while ensuring software quality in turn.

When services are loosely coupled, a change to one service should not require a change to another– Sam Newman, Author, Building Microservices

Slowly and gradually, microservices are becoming mainstream, and your organization should definitely care for this New Product Development method.

After all, it is unfair if the entire application suffers in case one of the services experiences a downtime.

What is a Microservices Architecture?

A microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API– Martin Fowler, Software Developer and International Speaker on Software Development

In layman’s terms, microservices divide a single application into independent services that, in turn, have their own defined role towards running the overall application. The extended features of these smaller services are:  Can be updated and scaled without disturbing the overall functionality of the application  Each of the services can be written in different programming languages Thus, microservices architecture is a disruptive software development service that is making news in the tech world as it promises to cater to scalability, time to market, and enterprise agility needs while ensuring software quality in turn.

Microservices Architecture Example A suitable real-life Microservices example is Netflix. The entertainment giant runs 250 million hours of content daily for their 98 million subscriber base. Where a user enjoys a seamless experience on the front end, the management of microservices, along with the cloud capabilities of Amazon Web Services (AWS), deserves the credit.

Netflix supports around 700 microservices that contribute towards a single objective of running the giant service. When any two microservices need to communicate, they use Application Programming Interface (APIs) to make contact. This way, the Netflix team can easily make changes to any of their services, without impacting the overall quality of the application.

Along with Netflix, brands like Amazon, Uber, The Guardian, PayPal, and Google have also embraced microservices. In fact, according to Dzone, 63% of enterprises adopted microservices architectures in 2018 alone.

Coming back to the question – Why should your organization adopt microservices?

Let’s have a look.

Microservices: The Differentiator within an Enterprise The architecture, when introduced into enterprises, can have a profound impact on all fronts. It affects the technologies, operations, as well as the culture.

For true implementation, there are a bunch of microservices architecture best practices that need to fall in place. The to-do-list for successful implementation include:  Breaking the monolith structure into a set of microservices  Automated unit tests to validate each of the microservices 

Implementing Continuous Integration, i.e., CI

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Creating the code quality metrics to test for existing bugs if any Adding runtime monitoring support to integrate monitoring service into the code Automating deployments by replacing manual deployments with scripts and infrastructure-as-code Building code that can be run inside of the containers

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Deploying the developed software over to the cloud platform

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As a leader, your greatest challenge will be to run architectural governance within the organization, to effectively make, building microservices a reality. This is important to maintain the sanctity of the processes and control failure or breakdown.

By implementing this architecture, you will be able to empower your teams to manage their work better, deliver more frequently, and improve the overall health of the project. It’s also an excellent opportunity for you to instill confidence in your teams by allowing them to deliver their best by using specialized technologies.

Key Benefits of Microservices Architecture Be it innovation, scalability, agility, or independence of the services; microservices development is an all-in-one solution that promises constant growth. Here are some of the benefits of microservices architecture in detail.

1. Loose Coupling This simply implies that updating a particular service won’t affect the other services or aptly the overall functionality of the software application, i.e., releasing software to production multiple times a day would be ok. All the services will be independent of each other, and the same goes for databases.

The rule is simple – each microservice should have its independent database that does not share data with other databases unless an API call is made.

2. Improved Scalability Total rewrites of the code when introducing upgrades is a yesteryear practice.

Building microservices helps put away the perils of days and hours of restructuring the codes by letting you divide one whole into several smaller modules.

Introducing updates or even fixing bugs in any of the modules does not mean that the plug needs to be pulled off from the other services too. It is all about implementing smart work.

3. Choosing Projects over Products A project has a defined milestone that needs to be completed within a defined lifespan. Traditionally, teams involved in a project’s timeline, hand over the project to the testing and the maintenance teams and shift over to the new project.

Microservices architecture tends to avoid the product vs project wars as the model follows the principle that a project team should hold the ownership of the product throughout its lifetime.

You Build it, You Run it– Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer, Amazon

4. Polyglot Persistence The term might seem a foreign language but is an essential glossary when talking about how to build microservices. Polyglot persistence means that independently existing data storage technologies exist for managing different kinds of data.

In the context of microservices, every service owns a dedicated database that needs to be managed by the service itself. Thus, no interdependencies and chances of hay-wired consistency.

5. Promoting Agile Delivery The best part about microservices development is its ability to roll out software and its respective updates in a timely manner. This is possible by implementing Agile Development in the form of sprints for every individual service that, in turn, increases speed to market.

Also, it is both Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment that are important for building a functional microservices architecture. The crux – build a feature, test it, launch it, and keep iterating without disturbing other services.

Conclusion To summarise, microservices architecture is a collection of independent services that are loosely coupled, individually deployable, and highly maintainable. If you are dealing with scalability problems or have a complex application with an infinite number of user journeys and service modules, microservices is the way to go.

However, microservices is not a one-size-fits-all architecture. The ideal way would be to start with monolith and switch over to microservices when you have to ensure individual delivery of services within a large application.

And, finally, when you choose microservices to streamline your software release, remember to move at a pace that your development team can handle – only then can you master the development of smaller and independent services.

Source- https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/why-microservices-for-enterprises/