Designing your architecture can be as much a business decision as a technological one. In this article, learn five reasons why you should consider moving to a microservice architecture.
1. Continuous delivery
Microservices provide the ideal architecture for continuous delivery. With microservices, each application resides in a separate container along with the environment it needs to run. Because of this, each application can be edited in its container without the risk of interfering with any other application.
This means zero downtime for users, simplified troubleshooting, and no disruption even if a problem is identified. The safe and rapid changes allowed by microservice architecture make it possible to update software fast enough to put the “continuous” in continuous delivery. By keeping disruption to a minimum, microservice architecture lets you update rapidly without inconveniencing customers.
Related: What is DevOps? Why do you want it?
2. Maximize deployment velocity
Microservice architecture allows you to maximize deployment velocity and application reliability by helping you move at the speed of the market. Since applications each run in their own containerized environment, applications can be moved anywhere without altering the environment. If an application works in development, it will work for the customer. This speeds up time to market and increases product reliability.
Related: If You Aren’t Leveraging Microservices for these 3 Applications, You’re Falling Behind Competitors
3. Faster innovation to adapt to changing market conditions
Microservices can also help you adapt more quickly to the changing market conditions. Because microservices allow applications to be updated and tested quickly, you can follow market trends and adapt your products faster.
Microservices also give you an edge when it comes to innovation, since developers can experiment on applications without fear of causing problems elsewhere. In today’s rapidly changing market, getting an edge on innovation helps you maintain your current revenue streams while driving new revenue.
4. Enable developers
Microservices provide the tools developers need to build higher quality software products. With a microservice architecture, each component of an application can exist in its own container, independently managed and updated. This means that developers can build applications from multiple components and program each component in the language best suited to its function, rather than having to choose a single less-than-ideal language to use for everything. Optimizing software all the way down to the components of the application helps you increase the quality of your products.
Learning to use microservices is important for more than just the benefits to the customer and the product. Developers, architects, and operations people are driven by performance. They want to address the technical and business problems they see using the best tools available. If you want to attract top talent – and keep the talent you have – it’s important to keep up-to-date on current ideas in IT. That means being ready to start working with a microservices architecture.
Related: How to Fast Track Your Adoption of Containers and DevOps
5. Reduce costs
Many businesses face growing infrastructure costs caused by the way their current architecture operates. Making any kind of change to an application in a monolithic architecture can be expensive, because every part of the monolith interacts with other parts – so a change in one place affects other aspects. This means a lot more work for developers and operations professionals to sort out the side effects of updates before they can make them. The more updates, the bigger the monolith grows, and the more time and resources have to go into making future changes.
Final thoughts
With microservice architecture, each application is in its own container. No time and resources are wasted managing the effects updating one application has on another. Thus, microservices are critical in helping companies achieve their business goals – whether that’s faster development, better software, top talent, or lower costs.
While it takes time, effort, and resources to convert a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture, the rewards can be well worth it.
