Insights

The role of microservices in cloud-native applications

Rajkumar Jeyaraj, Application Development for UST

Enterprises today must be ready to respond to increasingly complex and changing customer needs. Customers demand not only consistent, seamless usability but also immediate responsiveness and continuous innovation. Companies need agile and scalable software applications to meet these expectations.

Enter: cloud-native applications and microservice architecture. The emergence of the cloud has greatly enhanced software flexibility and scalability across industries. Cloud-native applications running on microservice architectures are now critical for newly developed applications.

Recent research has found that today 84% of enterprises are using microservices in some capacity, and about a third of both public and private companies have transitioned to distributed architectures.

So how exactly do microservices support agile cloud-native applications in today’s fast-paced business world? And are microservices the right option for your organization?

Let’s take a deeper dive into how microservices work, their benefits and challenges, and their role in cloud-native software development.

QUICK TAKEAWAYS

• Microservices use multiple self-contained application services that interact over APIs
• Cloud-native applications are built using microservices to remain agile and innovative
• Microservice architectures enable iterative development, better fault isolation, and increased scalability, among other benefits
• Microservices can be challenging to adopt without appropriate preparation and internal buy-in

WHAT ARE MICROSERVICES AND HOW DO THEY WORK?

Microservices (also known as microservice architecture) are a style of software development for cloud-native applications that uses multiple autonomous, self-contained services that interact over well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs).

Traditional monolithic architecture has become difficult to maintain and scale in many cases as modern applications grow larger and more complex. The idea behind microservices as a solution to this challenge is that applications can be better maintained when broken down into individual software components responsible for defined, independent tasks.

Here’s a simple visual that shows how the microservices model looks compared to traditional monolithic architecture:

Each microservice can be deployed and updated independently without impacting any other parts of the application. Separate development teams can be assigned to specific microservices to develop a specialization in optimizing that particular service.

Singular focus enables specialized expertise, shorter development lifecycles, faster problem response time, and the ability to work within a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) environment.

These benefit the end-user, creating a virtuous value cycle that drives better business results for an organization.

BENEFITS OF A MICROSERVICES MODEL

• Iterative development: Thanks to the isolated nature of microservices, developers can build and deploy minimum viable product (MVP) versions of new services and updates, then iterate to make improvements on bugs and other issues and in response to end-user feedback.
• Developer autonomy: Using microservices, multiple developer teams can work simultaneously on different components of an application without affecting one another’s output. This means they can also choose the tools and approaches that work best for their project without worrying about how their work will affect other application components.
• Fault Isolation: One of the most valuable benefits of microservices is fault isolation. This means a bug or error with one service won’t have adverse effects on the rest of the application. If a component fails, developers can simply use a different service, and the application can keep running.
• Less disruption: Because microservices are continuously built, deployed, and updated separately, change happens incrementally (as opposed to one big release with many changes). This creates a more seamless experience with less disruption for the end-user.
• Scalability: Because each microservice runs autonomously, they can be scaled separately without requiring application-wide adjustments. When demand increases for a particular microservice, it can be upgraded, and resources can be allocated to it as needed. By scaling only the services that need it (and only doing so when needed), companies can save on cloud server costs.
  Microservices and cloud-native applications also fit well with a DevOps culture and CI/CD processes, two impactful contributors to an organization’s ability to innovate and deliver consistently.
• Recruitment ease: A microservices model is an attractive work environment for developers today, particularly younger, newer developers familiar with DevOps and less attached to other, more traditional ways of operating. Experienced developers, too, often enjoy the prospect of less friction between teams and the ability to work quickly and independently on services for which they are specifically responsible.

But deploying microservices is not without difficulties. Microservices can add complexity and costs to your business while potentially exposing your data and applications to security issues. The challenges you can expect are described in more detail below.

CHALLENGES OF A MICROSERVICES MODEL

• Increased Complexity: Managing microservices can be complicated given the number of moving parts and variations across services. Different developers, for example, might use different programming languages and frameworks, which then require different tools and approaches to maintain or fix even services that fall under the same functionality.
• Higher Costs: Microservices require more resources; you’ll need more servers, tools, and APIs to keep everything running smoothly in an environment with less uniformity.
• Security Risks: Every microservice has a set of entry points, APIs, and communication networks. These many moving parts leave applications more vulnerable to security breaches than would occur in traditional monolithic models. Vulnerability testing is often difficult when many individual microservices need to be tested in a complex architecture. The distribution of microservices across multiple cloud platforms also poses the risk of lost application control and visibility.

ADOPTING A CLOUD-NATIVE APPLICATION AND MICROSERVICES APPROACH

Adopting a microservices model shouldn’t be done with haste or even all at once. It’s a better idea to start small and build your microservice model one success after another.

Switching to a cloud-native microservices model also requires a cultural shift in addition to the many technical complexities that must be navigated throughout a digital transformation.

Moving people away from “the way things have always been done” is a hard task in any industry or organization, and software development is no different. Companies adopting a new cloud-native microservices approach will need to take steps to gain buy-in from employees and provide the training they’ll need to operate successfully.

POWER YOUR CLOUD-NATIVE CAPABILITIES WITH PACE

UST PACE can smooth your transition to a cloud-native microservices model with templates to accelerate deployment, and other valuable building blocks your DevOps and development teams can use to increase speed and accuracy.

Contact us today to learn more.