Microservices Architecture Report for MIS603: Assessment 1 - Analysis

This report, prepared for MIS603, provides a comprehensive overview of microservices architecture (MA). It begins with a historical perspective on computing and software architectures, setting the stage for understanding the evolution of MA. The report defines MA, emphasizing its importance for modern enterprises, and explores the philosophy behind it. It delves into different types of software architectures, including business, application, information, and IT architectures, to provide a holistic view. The core of the report discusses the transition from monolithic to microservices architecture, highlighting the benefits such as improved scalability and maintainability, while also addressing associated challenges, including ethical, legal, and security issues. The report concludes with a summary of key findings and provides a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand or implement MA in a business context.

Running Head: MA
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Microservices Architecture
(Student Details: )
3/7/2020

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Microservices Architecture........................................................................................................2
Definition of software architectures (SA)..............................................................................2
History of Software Architecture and Computing.................................................................2
Philosophy behind microservices...........................................................................................3
Main types of Software Architectures....................................................................................3
Business Architecture (BA)...............................................................................................4
Application Architecture....................................................................................................4
Information Architecture....................................................................................................4
IT Architecture...................................................................................................................4
Transition to MA....................................................................................................................5
Benefits of MA for contemporary businesses........................................................................6
Issues related to MA...............................................................................................................7
Ethical Issues......................................................................................................................7
Legal Issues........................................................................................................................7
Security Issues....................................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
This report is mainly focused on briefing Microservices Architecture (MA) for the
employer as well as consulting clients for the introductory as well as continuous use purposes
of microservices. In doing so, the report is going to include a brief history of computing and
software architectures. With this paper, an explanation of how and why the contemporary
suite of info systems is originally different from the diverse generations of technology will be
included. This discussion is going to include the use of MA throughout the past ages
(Microservices, 2019). Thus, this report is going to talk about a definition as well as the
framework for the software architecture. The chosen software architecture is the MA and
hence its importance for the contemporary enterprise will be discussed (Leeflang, Verhoef, &
Dahlstrom, 2014). In addition to that, MA is the architectural approach; that is small as well
as autonomous. As there are so many benefits of MA hence this paper is going to explore its
key significance of the chosen software architecture so that it can be used further by modern
businesses (Aslam, 2016). While discussing key benefits, some key challenges will also be
discussed in relation to transitioning to monolithic to micro-services architecture. In the end,
a summary of the main types of software architectures will be highlighted precede a
conclusion.
Microservices Architecture
The whole paper on MA will be written from the perspective of an Information
Technology Expert (ITE); who is a professional expert in the software architecture and highly
qualified as well. Thus, the author of this paper will give advice on MA and how to address
the key challenges related to monolithic to microservices architecture (Voogt, Erstad, Dede,
& Mishra, 2013).
Definition of software architectures (SA)
In order to define SAs, it can be said that SA is the fundamental structure of a
software system. It is the discipline of forming such software systems and structures. In
general, every software structure is usually comprised of software elements, interrelations
among them, and the most important properties of both relations and elements (Verma,
Bansal, & Pandey, 2014).

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History of Software Architecture and Computing
To understand the MA, first, it is important to understand the history of basic
computing since the time of Charles Babbage. The history of computing is strongly related to
the mathematics professor who is famous for designing the foremost analytical engine.
Afterward, computing and computers have constantly evolved from generation to the current
powerful as well as superfast computers. From the historical perspective, the terminology
‘micro web services’ has been used by Dr. Peter Rogers in the year 2005 (Kappagantula,
2019). Apart from this, the MA has been introduced first in the conference of cloud
computing. The term was used for describing a style of architecture which many researchers
were experimenting with at that time. It is worth knowing that contemporary enterprises such
as Netflix and Amazon are the best examples of early pioneers of the MA. Later then, the
popularity of MA has been on the verge of popularity for optimizing the growth and
development of businesses (Hajkowicz, et al., 2016).
Philosophy behind microservices
It is well-known that the microservices type of architecture grows complex
application software from tiny, personal applications that can communicate with each other.
It is usually done by using language-independent interfaces (hereinafter referred to as APIs).
In this context, modern companies or businesses run into trouble when they are not able to
scale monolithic architecture. The MA has risen because modern businesses get into trouble
when their long-time architecture becomes difficult to upgrade as well as maintenance seems
too complex (Leeflang, Verhoef, & Dahlstrom, 2014). In such cases, microservices
architecture is a useful solution to this problem, because MA is used to break down complex
tasks into so many smaller processes which can effectively work independently irrespective
of each other.
Main types of Software Architectures
Generally, the software architecture design considers the system requirements and
structure for getting successful and efficient system architecture. Thus, focusing on the things
which can help one to create software architecture is essential for modern enterprises.
Moreover, architecture should always try to assess and address the key needs of key
stakeholders of the business (TechTarget, 2019). Good software architecture should always
handle both the quality and functional requirements in the modern business context. Apart

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from this, effective software architecture should also realize all of the scenarios use cases as
well as hide implementation details effectively (Voogt, Erstad, Dede, & Mishra, 2013).
Source: (Cleo, 2019)
As mentioned above, there are some major types of software architecture such as
information architecture, business architecture, information technology architecture and
application architecture (Liu, Liao, & Guo, 2009).
Business Architecture (BA)
In this context, BA often used to define the useful strategy of governance, business,
organization and thereby major business processes especially in a contemporary enterprise. It
has been found that such type of SA always focuses on the design and analysis of modern
business processes ( Singh, 2018).
Application Architecture
This type of software architecture is often used to serve like a blueprint for an
individual application system, their relationships and most importantly their interactions with
the contemporary business processes of an organization (Enabled Solutions, 2018).
Information Architecture
It has been found by the software and IT experts that, information architecture is used
to define the physical and logical data management as well as data assets resources (Ismail,
2018).

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IT Architecture
It has been seen that IT architecture is used to define the software and hardware
building blocks that make up the whole contemporary information system of an organization
(Mauersberger, 2019).
Transition to MA
While creating a sample MA, an organization needs to decide how microservices need
to be structured. For example, the organizations can divide the microservices into vertical
levels such as:
 API services (Smith, 2018).
 Central services
 Composite services
While transitioning to MA, one key issue is to identify when to utilise MA within
modern enterprises. In this context, a top challenge while using MA in place of monolithic
architecture is to decide when using MA makes sense in an organization. In addition to that,
using, distributed as well as elaborate architecture often slow down the development of the
software architectures. Thus, it can be a serious problem for start-ups as the rapid evolution
of the business model is a challenge for start-ups (Takyar, 2019).
Source: (Kappagantula, 2019)

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In this way, when it is decided that software architecture needs to be transitioned into
microservices architecture then software services are decomposed into smaller segments or
we can say microservices (NOVOSELTSEVA, 2018). Therefore, decomposition into smaller
segments affects an organizational structure. The key steps of migrating to MA are mentioned
below:
 Step I: deciding when to decouple and what to decouple
 Step II: warm-up with the fairly decoupled capability
 Step III: Minimizing dependency back to the Monolithic
 Step IV: Splitting sticky capabilities at an early stage
 Step V: Decoupling vertically as well as releasing the data at an early stage
 Step VI: Decoupling the important business and changes
 Step VII: Decoupling capability
 Step VIII: Go Macro then go Micro
 Step IX: migrating in atomic evolution steps
Benefits of MA for contemporary businesses
It has been found that the major popularity of microservices architecture has currently
been on the upsurge due to the benefits caused by microservices. It is because MA can
resolve so many presents IT challenges like the scalability of applications, increasing speed,
and most importantly rapid test processes. Here, the companies that have implemented the
MA; are operated the business successfully. For instance, companies like Walmart, Twitter,
IBM, eBay, Microsoft, Amazon, and many more companies are using MA for their
successful business growth and development (Terskikh, 2018). After moving to MA from
monolithic architecture, a huge improvement has been seen within the development, service
delivery, and scalability of the aforementioned companies. In addition to that, microservices
architecture is used to recognize the issues in the basic architecture design procedure.
Moreover, this MA is also beneficial for the estimation of architecture designs. Furthermore,
microservices architecture is helpful and efficient for further modifying the architectural
design. Apart from this, the key benefits of moving towards MA from monolithic architecture
are as follows:
 Better testability
 Improved maintainability
 Better deployability

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 Enables constant delivery as well as the deployment of complex and large
applications
 Provides improved fault isolation (TechTarget, 2019).
 Eliminated long term commitment towards technology stack
Issues related to MA
Post exploring the huge benefits of microservices architecture in relation to
contemporary enterprises, this section is going to talk about issues and challenges related to
using MA over monolithic architecture. If a company will split into the microservice
architecture from the monolithic system, then it will face both organizational and technical
challenges. In this way, if it is about technical challenges, then the organization is mostly
acquainted with the old domain and hence it will take a long time to get out of it. Therefore,
the above challenge is clearly showing that the refactoring into the microservices can be
conducted into small parts. Apart from the technical challenges, the modern enterprise will
also experience organizational challenges that actually require being resolved during splitting
the monolithic architecture into MA (Microservices, 2019). It has been seen that, during a
few in some cases, there exists a risk of employee's skills as well as an organizational
structure not supporting the novel architecture. In this way, in order to develop an effective
application, modern companies should strive to align the organizational structure while
considering the structure of application architecture (Ismail, 2018).
The transition to microservice architecture can also have ethical, legal and security
related issues. For instance, transforming into this new form of architecture might need to
recruit new employees having specific system knowledge and terminate the outdated
employees, and creates legal issues. Moreover, a completely new technology that rearchitects
the entire system is often perceived as risky by the employees and creates ethical issues.
Lastly, microservices are not completely secure and thus, create a risk of data hacking
(Enabled Solutions, 2018). In addition to that, some more issues in the transitioning process
to MA can be understood with the help of three main categories as follows:
Ethical Issues
In this context, when a wholly new technology is being used by any modern company
then usually there is a need to rearchitecting the whole system. Thus, it is typically perceived
as risky with the employees who ultimately create ethical issues in modern scenarios ( Singh,
2018).

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Legal Issues
In addition to that, when software architecture gets transformed into this new form of
architecture then it always needs to recruit new skilled and qualified employees. These new
employees must have specific system knowledge. It is problematic to terminate the old and
loyal employees of the company, and hence it creates serious legal issues (TechTarget, 2019).
Security Issues
It has been found that the proliferation of microservices architecture can create more
soft targets for crackers, hackers, and most importantly criminals. In this way, with a variety
of frameworks, operating systems, as well as languages, security needs are also enhanced. In
this way, ensuring that the system is not vulnerable to the security viewpoint becomes a
challenge. Lastly, microservices are not completely secure and thus, create a risk of data
hacking (NOVOSELTSEVA, 2018).
Conclusion
In whole, the report has successfully illustrated the idea of transitioning from monolithic
architecture to microservices architecture. With the help of this discussion, the report has also
provided detailed information on microservices architecture, while providing so many
examples of companies. These companies have successfully implemented microservices
architecture into their business operations. The report has successfully talked about the
benefits of MA for contemporary businesses while talking about companies such as Amazon,
Walmart, and Netflix. Furthermore, the key challenges have also been discussed in the
context of transitioning from monolithic architecture to microservices architecture In addition
to that; this paper has researched about migrating to micro services architecture as it will
offer a flexible solution for the learning management system of the modern companies. Based
on the above research and analysis of MA, it can be said that adopting microservices
architecture is a wise decision for any contemporary organization to shift their architecture to
MA.

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References
Singh, J. (2018). The What, Why, and How of a Microservices Architecture. Retrieved from
A Medium Corporation: https://medium.com/hashmapinc/the-what-why-and-how-of-
a-microservices-architecture-4179579423a9
Aslam, A. (2016). Why Companies Adopt Microservices And How They Succeed. Retrieved
from MicroHQ: https://medium.com/microhq/why-companies-adopt-microservices-
and-how-they-succeed-2ad32f39c65a
Cleo. (2019). How Microservices Architecture Helps Businesses. Retrieved from Cleo:
https://www.cleo.com/blog/microservices-architecture
Enabled Solutions. (2018). Why Microservices Are The New Innovation Enablers For
Enterprises. Retrieved from Hackernoon: https://hackernoon.com/why-microservices-
are-the-new-innovation-enablers-for-enterprises-6a4c637fd901
Hajkowicz, S., Reeson, A., Rudd, L., Bratanova, A., Hodgers, L., Mason, C., & Boughen, N.
(2016). Tomorrow’s digitally enabled workforce: Megatrends and scenarios for jobs
and employment in Australia over the coming twenty years. Australia: Australian
Policy Online.
Ismail, K. (2018). 7 Tech Giants Embracing Microservices. Retrieved from CMS Wire:
https://www.cmswire.com/information-management/7-tech-giants-embracing-
microservices/
Kappagantula, S. (2019). What Is Microservices – Introduction To Microservice Architecture.
Retrieved from Edureka: https://www.edureka.co/blog/what-is-microservices/
Leeflang, P., Verhoef, P., & Dahlstrom, P. (2014). Challenges and solutions for marketing in
a digital era. European Management journal, 32(1), 1-12.
Liu, S., Liao, S., & Guo, J. (2009). Surviving in the digital age by utilizing libraries'
distinctive advantages. THe Electronic Libarary, 27(2), 298-307.
Mauersberger, L. (2019). Why Netflix, Amazon, and Apple Care About Microservices.
Retrieved from LeanIX: https://blog.leanix.net/en/why-netflix-amazon-and-apple-
care-about-microservices

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Microservices. (2019). What are microservices? Retrieved from Microservices IO:
https://microservices.io/
NOVOSELTSEVA, E. (2018). BENEFITS & EXAMPLES OF MICROSERVICES
ARCHITECTURE IMPLEMENTATION. Retrieved from Apiumhub:
https://apiumhub.com/tech-blog-barcelona/microservices-architecture-
implementation/
Smith, T. (2018). New Research Shows 63% of Enterprises Are Adopting Microservices
Architectures. Retrieved from Dzone: https://dzone.com/articles/new-research-shows-
63-percent-of-enterprises-are-a
Takyar, A. (2019). Everything you should know about Microservices. Retrieved from
leewayhertz: https://www.leewayhertz.com/microservices-architecture-examples/
TechTarget. (2019). microservices. Retrieved from TechTarget:
https://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/microservices
Terskikh, M. (2018). 10 Tech Challenges That Are Solved by Microservices. Retrieved from
Containerum: https://medium.com/containerum/10-tech-challenges-that-are-solved-
by-microservices-d91adeecb2e7
Verma, J., Bansal, S., & Pandey, H. (2014). Develop framework for selecting best software
development methodology. International Journal of Scientific & Engineering
Research, 5(4).
Voogt, J., Erstad, O., Dede, C., & Mishra, P. (2013). Challenges to learning and schooling in
the digital networked world of the 21st century. Journal of computer assisted
learning, 29(5), 403-413.