According to IBM,

Microservices are a cloud-native architecture where a software application is designed and built using several loose components that are independently deployable.

Specific components make up a microservices architecture. These components can be the technology stacks used in building the application, including the data management model, the REST APIs, and the services offered around the application.

Many people around the world are often misled into thinking that REST APIs and microservices are the same things. The truth is REST APIs are part of the microservices. There are a lot of organizational benefits in employing the microservices architecture in software applications.

You can quickly deploy code with microservices and add new features without touching the whole application. The team involved in building the software can use different stacks and languages to creating the various components without affecting the code. Each component that makes up the entire software can easily be scaled.

Many comparisons have been drawn over the years on the difference between microservices and service-oriented architecture (SOA). The main difference is that SOA is a standard way of integrating the components of the web services in an enterprise-based application. While microservices, on the other hand, deals with only the application.

Characteristics of Microservices.

Even if there are no formal descriptions of the microservices architectural model, some characteristics are represented in all microservices-based systems. They include.

It is made up of multiple components.

When software is built as a microservice, you can break it down into multiple components. It has been the sole aim of microservices over time.

The main reason this is possible is that these services can e redeployed without compromising the integrity of the application. With a microservice, you do not need to change significant features on the application when redeploying.

However, this also comes with its wrong sides, including increased complexity when distributing workload on each component.

It uses a simple routing technique.

Microservices generally work as a simple UNIX system. It means that they are built to receive requests, process them, and give back a response within the shortest period.

A good microservice application is made with solid and smart endpoints that are quick in information processes and logical reasoning.

It is decentralized.

Microservices are always made to be decentralized. It is why developers can conveniently use it to develop platforms that others can use to solve specific problems. Moreover, because of the decentralized nature of the architecture, it enabled decentralized data management.

It is entirely failure-resistant.

Microservices are always designed to cope with failure. Since several services are designed together, there is always a likelihood that one service will fail. In certain instances like this, other neighborhood instances should be able to hold up the fail example for a while till it comes back up.

However, to avoid specific scenarios like this, it is always best to activate a monitoring system to help prevent the risk of failure.

It is ideal for evolutionary system design.

Microservices are ideal when you cannot fully detect what kind of devices can access your infrastructure. Currently, several applications are built in a monolithic form but are slowly being reprogrammed to microservices because of these characteristics.

How do microservices affect the organization and development process?

The truth is, the decision to use microservices is often based on the part of the developers and not the managers or stakeholders. However, there are also times where the managers help to make decisions concerning the process.

For example, managers may work with microservices because it gives different ways to run their teams, and development processes. Managers and developers love adopting the microservice architecture because it helps them blend more into their operational model.

Pros and Cons of Microservices.

Even with all the good parts of having microservices, there are also some downsides sides that we need to identify. So let us take a good look at both sides.

Pros of Microservices

• It does not restrict development and developers. Employing microservices architecture gives developers the freedom to freely develop and deploy their applications, ensuring that the development team is small and tasks are fulfilled.

• You can write an application in several languages. With microservices, the code fo the different components can be rewritten in several languages. However, it is not a recommended practice for large-scale production systems. To ease the process for these systems, the developers can adopt the latest technologies for them to work.

• It is easier to modify only one component rather than the entire application. When there is a change that must e made on one component, only the related service needs to be modified. Here, you do not need to adjust and redeploy the entire application, and it saves you a lot of time and stress.

• It is easier to integrate and scale. Microservice architecture makes it easier to scale and integrate with several other third-party services. In this kind of architecture, you can work with continuous integration tools such as Jenkins with ease.

• Easy fault isolation. During or after development, specific faults may most likely occur in a system. When you work with microservices, not only will you identify these faults, but it will be easier to isolate and work on them while the system is still running.

Cons of microservices

• It is often difficult to test In using this microservices architecture, the testing phase of the software development may be a complicated process to go through. It is mainly due to the significant components that make up the application.

• Load balancing can be difficult. During the development process, the software developers need to put in a lot of work to mitigate network latency and fault tolerance while building the application. It can lead to a lot of complexity.

• It takes work to build a communication media between services. While developing the application, the software developers need to look for the best ways each service can communicate with each other depending on the system. This may be a complicated process to go through.

Companies that work with Microservices architecture.

Amazon is reported to have switched to microservices architecture in recent times. They made this decision because they receive millions of API calls daily as a company, and it was practically impossible for their monolithic application to handle. Netflix has also joined the league of microservices architecture users because of their daily calls to their APIs.

The future of Microservices.

Even if this architecture may not be the most preferred architecture used by developers in the future, it shows a very viable idea to build, deploy, and deliver applications at scale. As a developer, employing microservices will give you the best development and maintenance processes, you need.