With evolution from monolithic architecture to micro services architecture, application designing has seen various methodologies come and go, some with more advantages than the other, some with higher complexities and higher performance.
Being a buzzword, we are well versed with microservices architecture which has been a hit with about 63% enterprise level companies and now being implemented with small and medium sized businesses. Also known as microservice architecture, microservices is an architectural style that structures an application or product as a collection of independent components that primarily are highly maintainable and testable, loosely coupled and independently deploy able and upgradable.
Numerous aspects of microservices make them a dependable architectural style. While allowing developers to create individual components ‘small services’, in microservices each component is built and deployed separately without zero or negligible amendment to the application as a whole.
That being the advantage reflecting towards developing the application, microservices architecture allows convenience of testing, understanding and maintaining smaller components individually and therefore cumulatively. Built and deployed separately, these components or products in themselves run their individual processes and network with other components with lightweight APIs.
An excellent solution for building bigger and comprehensive applications, wherein the distributed team can express higher productivity and efficiency, this architecture allows developers to work on different components separately unlike in monolithic architecture that has a predefined start to end flow.
Monolithic architecture is simple to build and deploy but difficult to maintain as one tiny amendment in the application shifts the entire framework and the application performance becomes quite unpredictable.
However simple monolithic applications are to build and require one time deployment, the application becomes too large in size making management more difficult. Every small change in the code requires redeployment of the entire application which becomes tiresome and a tedious process. From developer point of view, understanding the logic of monolithic applications midway is a very difficult and a cumbersome process when it is required for developing a single functionality.
Micro components not only denote smaller distinguishable independent parts of a larger application, but are rationalized based on 4 core qualities;
- Having independent vision
- Allowing independent evolution
- Allowing internal and external integration
- Ensuring low maintenance
Benefits of micro-services
Isolation
When one component fails, micro-services architecture provides an option to fix the specific component without disturbing the functionality of other components and the application as a whole. Making this style more profitable with component isolation and application resilience, singular components can be added, deleted, amended and independently deployed without causing chaos in the application environment.
Scalability
Microservices allows scaling up and down as the future requirements arise. Adding, deleting and amend specific elements to modify the final application, development teams have the liberty to work with singular components, proving as the appropriate approach for companies and businesses working with multiple applications and devices simultaneously.
Productivity
Compared to monolithic architecture, microservices are easier to understand. Instead of the entire application being affected, singular components can be checked for optimum functionality and can be fixed in case of any glitch. This improves productivity, saves time and cost, increasing the overall efficiency of the application as a whole.
Flexibility
Keeping in mind the primary goals of keeping the product development cost effective and creating a high performance application, microservices allows developers and strategists to choose the most apt framework and language for individual components, without affecting the communication among various components and the performance of the application overall.
Faster project development
This architectural style allows multiple developers to work on different components as independent services. This ensures faster completion and deployment of components and overall application development. Individual smaller services can be tweaked saving time of redoing and redeploying the entire application code every time.
Evolutionary
Offering better productivity and tool selection, this architecture is perfect to implement when the kind of devices it will be used on is unpredictable. Providing fast and controlled upgrades and fixes, this approach will minimize slowing down or stopping the apps.
Agility
Breaking down functionality of a large application to the most basic level and isolating singular components, with DevOps helps focus on updating specific features and functionalities of independent ‘micro’ services. Eliminating the traditional integration process associated with monolithic architecture, microservices architecture helps designing, developing and deploying speed up multiple folds.
Efficiency
Microservice architecture results in significant cost savings with independent component development and maintenance. In case of issues in functionality of the application, componenets can be isolated and fixed saving direct maintenance cost of the application as a whole and indirect cost in case of performance issues.
Resilient
Unlike monolith architecture, a specific issue in a particular component can not bring down the entire application and will result in a non-functional component but a working application. Micro service architecture eliminates single-point failure of applications with dispersing functionality of various components.
Revenue
Faster deployment, timely and convenient upgrades, user retention and higher engagement increases with continuous improvements with each iteration offered in a micro services structure.
Another important approach – DevOps
DevOps in combination to agile methodology has caught on the attention of developers as well as strategists. We firmly believe the immense potential this powerful combination has and implement it in projects that require robust structures and high performance and deployment in instalments. Not only does this combination accelerates innovation and development, but also makes the team more productive reducing errors and development costs. Successfully improving product quality, microservices with continuous testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery drives higher levels of business value.
The LTS Angle
With years of experience in product engineering, our experts are well versed in building both monolithic architectural styled applications and Microservices architectural styled applications and our developers will agree while both have their respective advantages; Microservices provide a convenient, low maintenance and higher performance compared to monolithic architecture. We strategize considering various aspects of development, technologies and methodologies to design, build and deploy an application component by component. Clubbing the combination of cost effective and appropriate frameworks and languages for small services, we efficiently network these components with APIs to ensure high performance and seamless User Interface and User Experience for consumers.
Rationalizing in the initial designing phase of the product, our experts consider the hierarchical level of singular independent components, knowing where to stop; creating a user friendly and high performance application that appeals to the consumer in functionality as well as design.