4 Reasons to Invest In Microservices Architecture
Software development requires good architecture, as the needs for consistent and continuous delivery increases. Investing in a good architecture comes with a reasonably high price. If a company, for example, develops a software by following an approach where both business and UI functionalities are mixed in the same source files, its maintainability will be affected in the long run. That’s because there will be a need to invest more to make them available for smartphones, too.
Monolithic Architecture
The traditional approach companies have been using is called the monolithic architecture. It uses a 3-tier architecture:
Presentation Layer – This layer describes the user interface (UI). In this layer, tasks are translated, resulting in something that is understandable to users. HTML, CSS, and Javascript are among the technologies that are used to develop the user interface.
Business Layer – This layer makes the logical decisions. In this layer, calculations are performed and data is being processed between two layers. Spring is one of the popular technologies used for this layer.
Data Access Layer – This layer describes how information is stored as well as retrieved. Information is passed to the second layer (business layer) and ultimately presented to the user via the first layer (presentation layer).
To put it simply, here’s how the monolithic architecture works. Web application user sends the request. The request is processed, executing the business logic to store the application-specific information to the database. Lastly, the user interface (UI) displays the date to the user.
This architecture works well. However, with the need for continuous and consistent delivery, companies found multiple problems. Scaling, maintaining a wide range of codebase, and costs are among these problems, so software development companies looking for other approaches that can address the problems.
Microservices Architecture
The solution companies found to address the problems with the monolithic architecture is called Microservices Architecture. It is a software development technique (a variant of service-oriented architecture) that structures one application as a collection of services that are loosely coupled. Services are self-contained and implement a single business capability. It is designed to overcome the challenges and failure of large applications. It adds resiliency so the components of the system can be capable of handling spikes and errors. It also carries out the microservices communication effortlessly because they ate in the well-defined interface. With this, companies can simply focus on one element of the overall application without worrying about the other components.
Why Invest In Microservices Architecture?
Easy to Modify – The technology stack for microservices is easy to modify, allowing specific components increase its usability and avail large benefits in the application. With this benefit, software development companies are given the assurance that their systems will not be outdated easily.
Easy to Isolate Faults – Unlike in the monolithic approach developers can easily locate and fix the issues, so if one module is affected, solving it will be very easy without affecting the other parts of the system.
Productive and Fast – Other teams do not wait for one team to finish as they can simultaneously work on different components. This increases speed and results to a faster release of a product.
Single Functionality – Customer satisfaction and user experience are the ultimate goal of the company so teams are not divided based on functionalities. The size of the team depends on the tasks required to be performed and teams may be broken down into smaller groups to focus on single application components. For example, if a team in Florida handles four services while a team in the middle east handles six services, the teams in Florida and in the Middle East can deploy and release functionalities.
With the need for continuous and consistent delivery, companies must adjust the speed to avoid failure. Big successful companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber are already using microservices because of the challenges they had with the monolithic approach. Software development a complex process but thanks to the microservices approach for providing companies with a perfect solution in solving these complexities.
While the microservices approach has proven to be very beneficial to companies, it is very important to know how to use it. Using it with a monolithic mindset defeats the purpose and might not help you achieve your ultimate goal. While you switch from a monolithic approach to the microservices approach, I suggest you also consider your project requirements and the size of the project.
