Benefits of Microservices Architecture

Author: Reddy Reddy

1. Scalability:

Each microservice can scale independently without affecting other microservices. Thus, it serves as an advantage over monolithic applications wherein a lot of resources are wasted for scaling unrequired services since they are all packed together into one single deployable Unit.

2. Availability:

Even if one service fails, other microservices are highly available, and the failed microservice can be rectified very quickly with minimal downtime as well. Thus, it serves as an advantage over monolithic applications wherein the entire application must be brought down.

3. Fault Tolerance:

Even if one microservice has faults with regards to, say, a database connection pool getting exhausted. Thus, there is an evident boundary defined with regards to any failure, and unlike in a monolithic approach, other services operate smoothly, and hence only a small part of the application is impacted instead of the entire application bogging down.

  1. Agility: As mentioned above, changes in a particular microservice can be completed and deployed very quickly which makes it a highly suitable architecture for ever-changing business requirements (meaning a highly agile environment).
  2. Polyglot Persistence: Each microservice can choose its own type of database based on the Use Case requirement. So, in general, the application stack is not tied to a particular database.
  3. Maintainability: For each business service, a separate microservice is created. Thus, the business code in a microservice is straightforward to understand since it caters to one business functionality. Also, since microservices caters to single business functionalities, the amount of codebase is also quite reduced, and this makes it highly maintainable.
  4. Software Stack agnostic:

Since a bigger application is decomposed into a number of smaller microservices, the application is not tied to a single software stack, and thus different software stacks can be used for different microservices.

  1. Faster Development: Unlike monolithic applications, code changes in microservices can be realized very quickly with changes in business requirements to result in a quicker development cycle.
  2. Faster Deployment: Since microservice caters to only a single business functionality, the amount of codebase is simplified considerably which creates rapid deployment.
  3. Clear Separation of Business Concerns: Each microservice caters to unique business functionality, and thus there is a very clear separation of business concern between each one of them, and thereby each micro-service can be built in a very robust way.

Conclusion

Microservices architectures fit within agile development environment as breaking a monolith into Microservices often aligns with breaking up a silo-oriented team structure into a self-organized and autonomous group. Real-world situations always differ from theory, and the microservices case is no exception. An enterprise should always consider its own business needs, industry threats, and possibilities before deciding to migrate to microservices.

The approaches described earlier are just landmarks to guide you through the migration process. Every business situation is unique and calls for an original solution. Migration to microservices has benefitted fortune 100 companies showing microservices have the transformative potential for all varieties of traditional and modern enterprises. Change is inevitable, and everyone must be ready to embrace it.

Microservices architecture promises to solve the shortcomings of monolithic applications, so many enterprises are interested in migrating their applications to be Microservices. Let’s look at a real-life example (case study) of how Charter Global can help enhance the success of your business.

https://www.charterglobal.com/migrating-to-microservices-from-a-monolithic-applications/