The microservice architecture is like a honeycomb.
“Have you ever seen a honeycomb?”
Well, not from close. From far off even, we can visualize the hexagonal paradigm of wax cells. Although honeycomb starts small, over a period of time we can see a strong fabric. Similarly, you can think of the microservice architecture approach in a honeycomb pattern. In other words, organizations get opportunities in profuse to grow big while adopting new functions without impacting other services.
Microservice architecture is not an invention but an evolution of the previous architecture patterns. The platform of microservice architecture is greatly influenced by disruptive innovation trends in social media, Cloud, and the Internet of Things to quickly penetrate the market.
Enterprises like Netflix, Microsoft, Google, Uber, Amazon, and Twitter have adopted the microservice architecture and witnessed great results. Netflix has been able to service 93.8 million users globally and stream more than 10 billion hours of movies and shows. Amazon has transitioned to continuous deployment and its engineers have been able to deploy code every 11.7 sec.
Why these companies shifted and you should too…
Before we hustle to the answer to this question, we must divulge on the limitations of traditional architecture which we have discussed in our previous blog on microservice architecture.
In the traditional monolithic architecture, the software was built as a unified whole, a big autonomous unit which contained components that were interconnected and interdependent. As the software used to grow bigger, more complexities were added. Even the smallest change or a bug-fix required re-deployment.
Microservice architecture solved this issue with its decentralized, loosely coupled pattern. The services here are fine-grained and the protocols are lightweight. Let’s crystallize some main advantages of this architecture which makes it more comprehensive:
1. Build-Up Scalability
With microservice-based platform – the influx of demand, increased productivity, the large increase in users, workload, and transactions can be managed without undue strain. It enables the system to handle the growing amount of work with additional resources added to the system. This way, microservices harbor growth with a good user experience which in turn increases ROI.
2. Swift Deployment
The modularity in microservice approach helps the system with containers like Docker and Kubernetes. These are decoupled so that it can be run on anything ranging from a laptop to the cloud service of choice. Also,
a. These containers give flexibility for inter-changeable app stack components.
b. In case of a security fix, these containers can be replaced.
c. Containerized apps help handle the additional load. This means you can scale up your app and make it super-robust with the help of Kubernetes.
3. Technology Agnostic
The microservices approach offers you the flexibility to take good from different technologies and use them in your app to make it more efficient. There is no type of vendor Lock-in or dependency concerns of any kind. You can use the language or framework of your choice. For example, you can use Node for I/O or concurrent tasks and Java for heavy lifting when it comes to disk operation.
Also, since microservices are technology agnostic, various teams can work independently. They can make their own decisions without having to communicate with each other or being dependent.
Moreover, using new technologies in the microservices approach is a painless task.
4. Fault Insulation
As all the microservices are independent, an app developed in the microservice architecture remains unaffected by the occurrence of errors in a service module. It will keep working, while you fix the affected module. This is helpful especially for large platforms like Netflix or Amazon where they have millions of visitors and shutting down the app for even a second can result in the loss of billions.
5. Enabling DevOps
The independent nature of microservices helps our DevOps team accomplish more in less time. The modularity of microservices enables cumulative releases which are an objective of DevOps. Both microservices and DevOps:
- Accelerate innovation
- Reduce errors
- Improve product quality
- Make DevOps teams more productive
In a Nutshell
Organizations with DevOps teams are looking forward to more production, more innovation, in less time, at low cost, thereby adopting Microservice architecture. The combination of these two is making the organizations more agile and productive than their counter competitions.
So, considering the benefits of the microservice architecture the focus is shifting to bring quick-win results to cater to the explicit needs of the business in the most agile way. The gravitational pull of microservices is so strong that the architecture will most likely become the default architecture in coming years.
However, there a few things you need to consider before you switch to microservices. We have covered them in a separate blog. You can read them for a better insight.
Talk to our experts if you want some real-world advice about microservices.
