Conventional software solutions, both on-premises and in the cloud, are large applications that handle several different business functions and technical operations from one platform. This monolithic design can offer developers and operational teams a variety of efficiencies, not to mention cost savings in the number of tools they need to manage.
However, this infrastructure can become bulky and unmanageable as a developer team upgrades the application and the rest of the organization expands its use cases and user base over time. To make applications that work better with agile project management and DevOps team needs, many enterprises are opting to transform their most important enterprise applications into microservices.
What are microservices?
Microservices architecture is an application model in which individual components and functions are separated into different containers, or clusters, so they can operate and scale independently. Many enterprise software vendors are incorporating microservices into the newer apps that they create, but a growing segment of enterprise tech teams are taking these applications into their own hands and creating microservices that work for their specific business needs.
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are used to maintain basic connections amongst these services, but each microservice hosts its own business data and primarily relies on its own business logic and operational rules. This independent design makes it possible for a company’s developer teams to focus on each individual app component rather than the application as a whole.