In this chapter, we gleaned over the evolution of computers and running multiple virtual machines on a single computer, which was possible through hardware virtualization. We learned about the tiered application journey that started 20+ years ago on bare metal machines. We witnessed the transition of three-tiered applications to the SOA/ESB architecture. The evolution of software virtualization drove the explosion of containerization, which led to the evolution of the SOA/ESB architecture to microservices. Then, we learned about the benefits and drawbacks of microservices. You can apply this knowledge of microservices to drive a business's need for rapid development and scalability to achieve time-to-market goals.

In the next chapter, we will move on to cloud-native applications and understand what is driving the motivation of various enterprises to move from monolithic to cloud-native applications. The purpose of this book is to go into the details of the service mesh architecture, and this can't be done without learning about the cloud-native architecture.