Microservices Architecture Advantages and Disadvantages, Risks, and 5 Use Cases

In recent years, many companies have been upgrading their software to a microservice architecture. According to the 2020 O’Reilly survey, about 28% of respondents mentioned that their companies use this approach for three years or more, and more than 60% use it for at least one year. This means that it’s the perfect time for you to implement cloud microservices architecture and learn about the advantages and disadvantages of microservices.

If you’re looking for the right team of experts to migrate your application to the updated platform, contact us to discuss the prospects for developing your software.

What are Microservices? 

In a nutshell, a microservices architecture is a collection of independent modules that run every process as a separate service. Each has its scope, database, and operational logic, but they communicate via APIs. Basically, they can be treated as independent software products as opposed to the monolithic structure principles.

Microservice is a special variety of software architecture distributed by separate domains. It’s of narrow-focused nature, meaning that each microservice handles a specific task, uses autonomous data storage, and has its own (independent of any external modules) means of connecting with the storage. Similarly to web services, one can effortlessly combine microservices in Java, C#, Python, and even in mobile software development languages.

Why Enterprises Choose to Use Microservices

Why choose microservices? Microservice software architecture is based on many interconnected but independently functioning software modules that can be easily replaced, removed, and reused in other projects. Each microservice has a specific, narrowly targeted task. At the same time, even if this module accesses the DBMS (Database Management System) or server, it does it autonomously, without resorting to the help of third-party modules.

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Essentially, you can use small ‘bricks,’ each of which has a unique purpose, to construct a bigger ‘building’ — the final software product. For many major types of software out there this is simply short of a perfect solution.  However, opinions in the industry still differ. According to the mass survey, 55% of respondents state that the adoption of microservices has brought them either next to exactly desired or exactly desired results. That leaves us about a half of the respondents’ audience that has slightly or completely different thoughts. Let’s explore what may affect the mass preference positively or vice versa.

Microservices Pros and Cons

The following microservices pros and cons can help better understand whether there is a need to implement it in an existing software solution.

According to all microservices advantages and disadvantages above, we can argue that this is quite a performance-boosting solution for large-scale projects aimed at automating deployment, as well as the constant growth in the number of features and users.

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Role of Microservices in Software Modernization

Taking into account all the benefits of microservices, from the point of view of software modernization into a microservices architecture, you get to:

• increase the stability of regularly updated applications: they continue to function even if a single module fails;

• eliminate the need to use previously used technologies: when you modernize your current app version and build new functional modules, you can use any tech stack and choose modern and easy-to-use programming language;

• achieve higher maintainability and cut recruitment costs: microservice solutions are ultimately simpler to maintain, and you can gather development teams to work on them much faster due to very basic programming requirements.

As for the indisputable advantages of microservices for business, they are as follows:

• higher employee productivity: a segmented workflow saves specialists from getting tangled in massive instances of code. Therefore, less routine is required to reach the results, which certainly motivates workers to complete more tasks in shorter terms;

• increased scalability: instead of the only horizontal or only vertical scaling possible for monoliths (with a forced hardware upgrade), companies also get the opportunity to implement different scaling approaches simultaneously, scale up to handle growing loads at any time, as well as rapidly implement features and system innovations (boosting revenue numbers, competitive edge, and other in the process);

• organizational alignment: CI/CD techniques (they are often used during microservices implementation) allow companies to shorten the time to market without losing non-functional requirements (performance, maintainability, scalability, reliability, operational factors, etc.), as well as integrate changes as quickly as possible into the working version of the code;

• optimized business functionality: companies can upgrade the functionality almost endlessly by connecting new and deactivating old, unnecessary blocks.

Microservices Risks of Implementation and What They Mean for Your Business

With the real disadvantages of microservices, there are plenty of scenarios where they are in the utmost need. Before we list the risks associated with the microservices’ implementation, we would like you to know that you can avoid and minimize them by:

• your awareness of all microservices disadvantages;
• risk management;
• cooperation with a qualified team or partnership with a professional vendor.

Microservices Implementation Risks

Here are top-3 microservices implementation risks identified by our developers and ways to handle them properly:

• Risks of a company being underprepared to move to a new architecture. Unfortunately, not every company is ready for the transition to a new architecture. Therefore, before taking this radical step, you have to assess if the system is ready for migrations (since in a monolithic architecture all components are closely related, this can complicate the development of a new architecture);

• Underestimation of the process complexity. Companies often underestimate the complexity of microservices implementation because they focus on simpler maintainability as a major benefit. However, in reality, during migration, other problems may arise, for example, related to performance or incompatibility of components. Also, companies may face some security risks when moving monolithic apps to microservices; 

• Unclear goals and poor budget planning. Sometimes, companies set unclear goals and find themselves in a situation when their expectations are not met. To avoid such scenarios, learn the advantages and use cases of microservices as applied to your sphere and tech resources. 

To avoid all these microservices risks, hire our experienced team. We will apply our best practices to save you money and time.

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5 Use Cases of Microservices

Why use microservices? To answer this question, let’s find out in which microservices use cases this type of architecture can be a holy grail.

Outdated apps 

Big data apps

Systems that use big data with smart algorithms are ideal for the transition to new architecture due to minimizing the number of dependencies and reducing the time for processing operations. This is why the vast majority of machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions are based on this architecture.

Real-time processing solutions

Streaming solutions, as well as instant data processing solutions (transactions, geolocation, etc.), also use microservices to ensure that operations are performed at an appropriate speed.

High-traffic websites

Solutions with a high tendency to scale (for example, news portals and social networks) need to improve on-demand performance and fast content delivery. Microservices are capable of meeting all of these needs.

Solutions made for big workloads

To quickly process numerous simultaneous user requests, it makes sense to migrate to the cloud. In turn, the updated architecture assumes placing the system on several domains at once, which intelligently distributes the load on its server side.

Consider ModLogix as Your Trusted Legacy System Modernization Provider

ModLogix is your partner in migrating existing legacy software solutions to secure, resilient, cost-effective, and scalable platforms using all the advantages of microservices architecture. We will optimize your applications for changing market needs to ensure that your business remains sustainable even in the fiercest competition and uses all the benefits and risks of microservices architecture.

Find out more about our expertise in our portfolio with legacy software use cases. If you would like to discuss the details of upgrading your solution, fill out this contact form, and our specialists will contact you shortly to introduce all microservices advantages for your business.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, cloud microservices can solve long-term problems of scaling, agility, modernization, and performance in existing software. Therefore, if you aim at favorable changes in your business and its growth, you will have to make the appropriate changes. In short, do not waste another minute — open up new opportunities for the company development with microservices architecture advantages right now. 

Contact us to discuss the steps to make the updates and hire a dedicated team to implement software modernization services.