Acceptance of Microservice-Based Architectures

As we have discussed in this book, service- and microservice-based architectures have grown in popularity in recent years. Migrating applications to some form of a service-based architecture is becoming a standard technique in reducing technical debt and making applications easier to maintain.

As companies look toward moving their applications to the cloud, they are moving to the cloud usually as part of an overall product modernization strategy. This modernization strategy includes moving to state-of-the-art application architectures. In recent years, this state-of-the-art application architecture involves using microservices and other service-based architectures as part of that strategy. This is because technologies such as Docker have made microservice-based architectures a viable technology for application development.

Realizing this, cloud providers have begun to provide higher-value managed offerings, such as the EC2 Container Service, for use in managing our microservice-based containers.

Smaller, More Specialized Services

As we modernize our applications and move them to the cloud, we begin looking at cloud services and how they can be utilized as extensions to our application’s services. Capabilities historically provided within the applications are now provided by the cloud.

The major cloud providers now provide features such as databases, caching services, queuing services, logging services, content delivery network (CDN) capabilities, and transcoding services.

Greater Focus on the Application

The cloud has created a shift in focus away from the creation and management of the infrastructure needed to run our applications, and let us spend our time on more critical aspects of the application and the application environment. The cloud has largely removed a major hurdle in application management, making it possible for us to focus our attention on higher-value aspects of running our applications.

The Micro Startup

The cloud has made it possible for very small startups, often self-funded, single-person operations, to come into existence leveraging the inexpensive and scalable computing and other technology capabilities that the cloud offers.

It has never been easier for an individual with an idea to build that idea and potentially profit from it. The ability to build a compute ecosystem without the need to invest in an expensive infrastructure is helping to get new, fresh ideas to come to market quickly. In particular, mobile applications such as online games have benefited greatly from this capability.

These startups bring applications online quickly that either flourish or fail, with minimal investment. For those that flourish, the cloud gives the applications the means to scale easily and inexpensively, letting companies invest in infrastructure at a rate proportional to their business needs. This has made it a lot easier to run and manage small startup companies financially.

Security and Compliance Has Matured

In the early days of the cloud, security issues were often cited as one of the primary reasons why companies could not move their applications to the cloud.

Recoginizing the need for improved security, cloud providers now provide better capabilities for securing cloud applications. Cloud companies also have added security assurances in the form of regulatory compliances such as PCI, SOC, and HIPPA.

Combined with a strong track record of visible high-quality security, these changes have removed security as an obstacle for a company looking to consider moving to the cloud.