Microservices are creating quite the buzz in the current digital transformation era. Every day, more companies are making the shift from monolithic architectures to microservices. The number of companies taking the plunge is expected to keep growing at 22.5% between 2019 and 2025.

Several major enterprises, including Google, Uber, Spotify, Amazon, and Netflix, have already adopted this “new” software development architecture. However, at ParalleStaff, we don’t consider microservices as a new application architecture because it has been in existence for decades. Besides, it aligns with the objectives of other software development concepts, such as modular programming and service-oriented architecture.

The internet of things (IoT) fuels the current shift to microservices, as does the increased use of mobile devices, cloud computing, and low-cost data storage. Although microservices sound appealing to any organization, you must do your due diligence to determine whether it is a good fit for you.

In this article, we are going to briefly look at monolithic vs microservices architecture and describe the main benefits of microservices architecture.

Monolithic vs. Microservices Architecture

A monolithic software architecture means that the software exists as a single cohesive unit. The code’s components share a memory space designed to work together. Thus, the services are interconnected, dependent on each other, and require developers to update or make changes to an entire stack of code simultaneously. This impedes the application’s scalability, and successful deployments are time-consuming and can attract huge costs.

On the other hand, using microservices application architecture allows a system to be broken down into several smaller and independent services. Each service develops, deploys, and scales separately but effectively communicates with the others using APIs. Furthermore, developers can implement the individual microservices on different platforms and in different programming languages.

Migrating monolithic applications to microservices applications has multiple benefits to an organization, including faster development and improved application performance. Below are more of the benefits of adopting a microservices architecture during this digital transformation.

Microservices Architecture Benefits

The benefits of microservices are continually making digital transformation appealing to more organizations. If you switch to microservices, here are four top benefits that you will enjoy:

1. Agility During the Digital Transformation: Independent Teams That Take Ownership of Their Service

With many organizations adopting remote working cultures and having more nearshore software development teams, microservices can be their saving grace. This is because microservices help nearshore development teams to break down functionality to basic levels and grant developers more independence to make technical decisions. Some decisions that lie in the hands of independent developers include tool selection decisions whereby they get to decide the libraries, frameworks, and coding languages they will use to develop individual services.

As a result, app development is sped up as everybody is aware of the specific services they are working on, and at the end of the day, everybody is proud to own their services. There are also fewer delays and increased productivity as the independent teams do not have to interconnect their services. The clearly defined boundaries between the service units reduce the possibility of generating significant technical mistakes.

Consequently, you can make use of nearshore staff augmentation to hire top talent developers who can handle specific microservices units. Additionally, with nearshore software outsourcing, you get long-term talent affordably and within your timezone to allow you real-time collaboration.

2. Easier Deployment During the Digital Transformation: Enable Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery

Microservices applications are easier to decrypt and evolve as compared to monolithic applications. That’s mainly because there are no hidden dependencies between the services, so developers must not test or redeploy an entire application.

Metaphorically, microservices migrations are more like turning a dial instead of an on and off switch. When adopting microservices, you turn up the dial to add one or more services. This way, you get an opportunity to determine whether what you are taking on is working for you or not. If you are getting what you are looking for, you can turn the dial all the way up.

Besides, microservices’ small size and modularity make them easy to build, enhance, and deploy. Not to forget, the distributed nature of this application architecture allows for seamless continuous maintenance and troubleshooting because single points of failure do not affect an entire system.

3. Flexible Scaling: Independently Scaled to Meet Demand for Applications Features

Working on microservices during the digital transformation era.
Close-up of businessman coding on a laptop at his desk.

Monolithic applications make it difficult for organizations to scale up and adapt to the fast and ever-evolving IT market needs. That’s because components in a monolithic application are tightly coupled, making it challenging to separate services or components when looking to upgrade or scale them independently.

However, microservices enable independent scaling of the decoupled services, allowing developers to quickly duplicate or introduce new components to the system without scaling the entire application. Furthermore, each service can use its language or framework while still communicating with other parts of your program. It is also easy for developers to understand various service modules and to replace the underperforming ones.

4. Resilience: Service Independence Increases an Application’s Resistance to Failure

Microservices are desirable for companies working on multiple platforms and devices as the various services allow nearshore software developers to utilize a different service as they attempt to redeploy a failed one. Independent scaling distributes functionality across other components and services, eliminating the occurrence of a single point of failure within an application.

This subsequently reduces the performance impact and downtime on more demanding components of the app and allows scaling on demand. The decreased downtime also brings about an increase in revenue either because of increased user efficiency or engagement.

It also provides an organization with a competitive edge by enabling efficient, prompt data processing and streaming architectures.

Learn More About Microservices Causing a Digital Transformation

As you migrate to the microservices application architecture, nearshore outsourcing allows you to get the job done while saving you some coins. Nearshore software development enables you to have independent developers on board to collaborate whenever necessary. They discuss and develop codes for individual microservices.

Moreover, you can spread and mitigate risk by distributing responsibility among various developers. Contact us today for more information and guidance on migrating to the microservices application architecture.

Rick Wallace
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