Enterprises, Meet Microservices

Suppose you need to update an application in your organization’s systems. Something small, a simple upgrade to fix a business system glitch. Sounds easy, right? Depending on your services architecture, it might not be as simple as you think.

Many of today’s organizations use a traditional monolithic architecture, meaning that the system components from data entry to the user interface are interconnected into one large piece. With this framework, it’s impossible to make one change without affecting the rest of the components.

But in an age of constant technological change, businesses need to be able to quickly adapt, easily apply upgrades and run application development concurrently to stay on top of the organizational game. In short, the traditional architecture no longer works.

The solution? Microservices.

Microservices, or the method of developing software as adaptable applications and services that can be individually released, helps enterprises build the easily updatable systems they need to stay relevant in today’s constantly evolving marketplace. Bernard Golden celebrates its “ability to distribute work across multiple groups in such a way that each group can work on individual application sections without imposing additional work to others” in his TechBeacon post “5 fundamentals to a successful microservice design.”

This alternative to the monolithic services structure allows businesses to develop more flexible IT systems, supporting for simultaneous software application development and enables more efficient scaling.

Microservices can also help IT departments shift from a reactive stance to a more proactive effort. The ability to efficiently update select software without pulling the entire system offline ensures they can keep the organization’s systems efficient, optimized, and secured.

Microservices can help organizations create an executable business model, which insulates the business from the potential disruption of technology innovation. While many new-world organizations (like Google, Amazon, Facebook) have understood the advantages of such an architectural model and even started implementing some aspects of it, it is yet to hit the enterprise market on a bigger scale (click here for a good read on this).

Sounds good to be true? Like many IT methodologies and practices, transitioning to microservices is a big undertaking. It requires technical expertise to efficiently implement and organizational buy-in to maximize and support the new system.

Yet in the long haul, revitalizing the traditional monolithic system structure will enable your organization to respond faster, deploy quicker, and provide better customer support. Make your systems simple again with microservices.