Microservices - Not a free lunch! - High Scalability -

Microservices - Not a free lunch! - High Scalability -

Microservices are a style of software architecture that involves delivering systems as a set of very small, granular, independent collaborating services.

Though they aren't a particularly new idea, Microservices seem to have exploded in popularity this year, with articles, conference tracks, and Twitter streams waxing lyrical about the benefits of building software systems in this style.

This popularity is partly off the back of trends such as Cloud, DevOps and Continuous Delivery coming together as enablers for this kind of approach, and partly off the back of great work at companies such as Netflix who have very visibly applied the pattern to great effect.

Let me say up front that I am a fan of the approach. Microservices architectures have lots of very real and significant benefits:

• The services themselves are very simple, focussing on doing one thing well;
• Each service can be built using the best and most appropriate tool for the job;
• Systems built in this way are inherently loosely coupled;
• Multiple developers and teams can deliver relatively independently of each other under this model;
• They are a great enabler for continuous delivery, allowing frequent releases whilst keeping the rest of the system available and stable.

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