Microservices are an increasingly popular way to build scalable, efficient applications. In a microservices architecture, individual components of the application are built as separate services that can be deployed and scaled independently. This allows for greater flexibility and efficiency in development and deployment than traditional monolithic architectures.
Microservices allow you to break down your app into smaller, more manageable pieces that can be developed and deployed independently. The architecture makes it easier to scale your app as needed and reduces the risk of downtime if one component fails.
Microservices: What They Are and How They Benefit Software Development
Microservices are a type of software architecture that enables large applications to be built out of smaller, independent components. The benefits of this approach to software development include improved scalability, reduced complexity, decoupled code, and greater flexibility. Let’s discuss the advantages of microservices in greater depth.
The Advantages of Using Microservices in Your Application Architecture
Microservices have become popular for building cloud-native applications due to a slew of business and technology benefits:
1. Support Your Massive Business-Critical System
Microservices simplify the process of constantly adding new features to big systems by partitioning functionality (code decoupling). You can develop and deploy microservices independently to add and/or update new features without affecting the rest of the application. This leads to faster development cycles, more frequent updates, making it easier to update and maintain large applications while minimizing the impact of updates on other systems.
2. Increase Flexibility and Scalability
Microservices are also easier to scale than traditional monolithic applications. When you need to scale a microservice, you can simply add more instances of that service to your application.
This is much easier than scaling a monolithic application, which requires you to scale the entire application. The latter takes significantly more resources and poses a much greater risk. Microservices make agility and scalability safer and easier.
Microservices also enable you to use different technologies for different parts of your app without being locked into a single technology stack.
3. Improve Your Fault Tolerance and Overall App Efficiency
Microservices are more fault-tolerant than monolithic applications. When one microservice fails, the other microservices can continue to run while your development team focuses on debugging the isolated microservice making it much easier to recover from failures.
This also makes adding new features less risky; you don’t have to worry about the entire application failing with a new feature deployment.
Even better, you can optimize each service individually to run more efficiently, leading to better overall performance for the application.
4. Maintain a Competitive Advantage by Developing Faster
Because microservices can be developed and deployed independently of each other, you can launch new features faster. When your company has an idea for functionality that would better serve your customers or partners, you can test a small version of it in a pilot with relative ease. You don’t need significant input or feedback from users outside your target functionality area, and QA will take significantly less time. You can build, launch, and see how users react in real time.
5. Better Understand and Document Your Business Apps
Each microservice has a single responsibility, making it easier to understand what each microservice does. Not only does this make documentation easier, it also streamlines handoffs as teams change and developers move on. New developers don’t need to untangle a mountain of code to understand the services provided by your application.
6. Simplify and Expedite Testing
Microservices can be tested independently of each other, making it easier to find and fix bugs. By breaking the application down into smaller components, it is easier to identify and address problems. This will save your business a lot of time and money in the long run. It will also allow your development teams to innovate often without the burden of technical debt accrued by strongly coupled code.
7. Improve Security
Many technology leaders argue that applications built with microservices create a greater security risk. There are more elements to watch and a broader landscape to monitor. We, however, think microservices present a great opportunity to review your security in general.
When building your microservices, design with security in mind. Answer the question, “How do we make this one microservice as secure as possible, and what steps should we be taking to ensure it stays that way?” Microservices can be deployed in secure environments, as each microservice is isolated from the others. And if one is compromised, your development team can quickly address the issue without worrying about an entire mission-critical business application coming crashing to the ground.
8. Leverage Cloud Services
Commodity hardware aside, microservices are especially well-suited to cloud-based deployments, as they can make use of the on-demand, pay-as-you-go nature of the cloud to scale up or down as needed.
You also get access to hundreds, if not thousands, of cloud services and APIs when you build a business application in the cloud with microservices.
You can implement new features even faster when you lean on these resources.
Specifically, if you’re looking to build a cloud-native application, developing with microservices is the obvious path forward.
9. Lower Costs
Microservices can be deployed on commodity hardware; you don’t need to invest in expensive hardware to run your application.
When using cloud services with your microservices, you can also experience significant cost savings. When compared to a traditional monolith, you only pay for the resources you actually use in the cloud, especially when built using serverless resources that are billed by runtime.
Why You Should Consider Making the Switch to Microservices
Microservices are a great way to improve the modularity, maintainability, and testability of your codebase. You can deploy your applications more quickly and easily.
If you’re thinking about making the switch to microservices, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Breaking down your monolithic application into smaller services will make your codebase more manageable.
- You’ll be able to deploy your services independently, which will make your deployments more efficient.
- Microservices will allow you to scale individual services as needed, which can improve your overall application performance.
- Because each microservice is a self-contained unit, it will be easier to test and troubleshoot individual services.
- You can choose the programming language and framework that is best suited for each service, which can improve your code’s overall maintainability.
If you’re looking to improve the modularity, testability, and maintainability of your codebase and want to be able to deploy your applications more quickly and easily, consider making the switch to microservices.
How to Get Started with Implementing Microservices in Your Own Projects
You can significantly impact your business and its future by breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, more manageable services. If you’re interested in implementing microservices in your own projects, you need to know a few things to get started.
First, you need to understand what microservices are and how they can benefit your project. Microservices are a way of breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, independent services that you can deploy and scale separately.
Then, you need to ensure your application is well-suited to this type of architecture and choose a strategy for implementing microservices for your business. Make sure you carefully consider how best to structure communications between services so that they work together efficiently.
Then, you need to choose the right tooling and platform to support your microservices. Some popular software options for developing microservices include Java, Node.js, and Python.
Lastly, determine a strategy and toolset to manage and monitor your microservices. You can’t just build, deploy, and move on. Especially for security, you’ll need to keep an eye on your features.
Not sure where to start? Our team at Soliant Consulting can help you get started with cloud native application development. Contact us today to learn more. 
