Cloud Native Application Design – Benefits of Microservices

In the last post, I introduced the concept of microservices and why it is a default fit for Cloud Native Design. But an important question that should be asked is why microservice-based design has gained so much popularity in recent years. What all advantages microservices gives us over traditional application design?

Let us go over some advantages of microservices-based design here

Ease of Development: The very first thing visible in microservices-based architecture is that we have divided the application into smaller services. This also means we can organize our developers into smaller teams, focusing on one piece of deliverable, less code to understand, less code to the manager, and hence can be more agile.

Scalability: A monolith application is difficult to scale as you are looking at replicating the whole application. In the case of microservices, you can focus on pieces that are actually required to scale. For example, in an eCommerce system, a search microservice is getting a lot of requests and hence can be scaled independently of the rest of the application.

Polyglot programming: As we have divided applications into smaller pieces, we have flexibility in choosing tech stacks for different pieces as per our comfort. For example, if we know a certain Machine learning piece of application/ microservice can be developed easier in python, whereas the rest of my application is in Java, it is easy to make the choice.

Single Responsibility Services: As we have divided the application into smaller services, each service is now focusing on one responsibility only.

Testability: It is easier to test smaller pieces of applications than to test them as a whole. For example, in an e-commerce application, if a change is made in the search feature, testing can be focused on this area only.

Agile Development: As teams are dealing with smaller deployable now, it is easier and a good fit for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD), hence helping achieve less time to market.

Stabler Applications: One advantage microservices architecture gives us is to categorize our microservices on basis of criticality. For example, in our e-commerce system, order placement and shopping cart features will be of higher criticality than say a recommendation service. This way we can focus on the availability, scalability, and maintenance of areas that can directly impact user experience.