Application Modernization has become the need of the hour.
Gone are the days when an organization had to depend upon a singular monolith legacy system for most of its tasks. It all made sense back when the majority of tasks used to happen on singular desktop software. The database and all the software clients were interconnected to maintain consistent records with central security configurations.
Now, with the micro devices available everywhere and cloud solutions making it easy to function even from remote locations, microservices have become the ideal architecture. If you’re still unsure whether a monolith application in your business is slowing it down, here are some signs that can help you identify it.
Monolith Applications and Signs They’re Hurting Your Business Right Now
Suppose your organization is using a traditional legacy system that handles everything from database operations to background processing. Chances are, you’re still stuck with the outmoded system that is hurting your business’s growth prospects. Some telltale signs that can lead you in the right direction are-
- Whenever there’s a new version deployment, more users get affected by it than necessary.
- Security concerns in one section can halt processes everywhere.
- Increasingly growing performance issues, which cannot be solved through siloed fixes.
- Even when just one feature needs to get updated, the entire application has to be put in downtime to manage dependencies.
- Scaling different services has become impossible without scaling up the entire application.
- It’s becoming hard to automate functions anymore since the entire application has become quite complex.
- With each feature addition, the maintenance cost of the application keeps increasing.
- It takes humongous efforts to install a new device into the organization.
- Managing user roles is becoming increasingly difficult.
If any of this sounds like something that you’ve faced in the recent past, know for sure that your monolith application has become a burden for your business. And it’s high time for you to consider switching to microservices.
What is a Microservice Application Architecture?
As the name suggests, microservice architecture brings in modularity to improve deployment velocity and scalability. Unlike monolith applications, microservices divide individual tasks into loosely coupled services that can function independently and parallel to each other.
Different services ensure that for the different tasks, you will be limited to a single and common technology stack. Multiple services can be built in different programming languages as they fit their functionalities. These services can then communicate with each other through simple APIs.
Microservices make it easy to enhance or scale one feature of your business system without affecting others at all. Different SaaS applications can function independently of each other and can generate and analyze diagnostic data independently too. This will further empower your analytics team to derive more actionable insights from the microservice applications. More ways a microservice architecture can make things better than a monolith application are-
Monolithic Application Vs. Microservices
A monolithic application is one unified enterprise system that performs a variety of tasks all by itself. In comparison, microservices are the individual systems that communicate with each other via APIs to harbor in the benefits of modularity in system upgradation. The following pointers will briefly discuss how microservices are the ideal solution for modern business problems and opportunities.
Quicker Deployment |
When working on a monolith application, UI, development, QA, operations, and all other cross-functional teams are required to wait for one another before moving forward. This can cause a severe lag in the deployment process. However, with microservices, a continuous process can be implemented wherein code is consistently developed, debugged, tested, and deployed in incremental phases. This allows unprecedented efficiency in the process and quickens the deployment of all the additional features. |
Ideal Toolset |
Monolith applications require you to create all the sub-services with the same technology stack. This means if there’s a service that can easily be developed with some pre-built library of a different language, there are no easy means to leverage that. Instead, the entire application gets coded in the same language. However, since microservices are independent of each other, all the services can be developed in the most efficient language and framework. |
Simplified Maintenance |
Since microservices work in much smaller modules than monoliths, they are much easier to debug. Microservices can be developed with the most efficient technology stack. This means fewer lines of code can accomplish the same job, which in monolith may have required complex functions. This results in simpler codes that can then be compiled and solved independently and hence quickly to accelerate maintenance processes. |
Scalability |
Scalability has remained the biggest drawback of monolith applications. No individual feature could easily get enhanced whenever there was an option. Doing so would lead to major downtime for the remainder of the services as well. The modularity of micro-services solves this problem by keeping each service as a distinct component, which can be scaled as and when there is an opportunity. |
Improved Fault Tolerance |
Unlike monoliths, microservices are decentralized. This means if there’s ever a failure in one of the microservices, the rest others could function as though nothing is awry at all. Moreover, with proper maintenance provision, you can even ensure that whenever several services need to be put down for some reason, the end-user can continue their work with the system without facing any downtime at all. |
How To Convert Monolithic Application to Microservices
Now, since we know that microservice outperforms monolith applications in almost every aspect of present-day business needs, let’s figure out the ideal migration strategy for your organization.
Strategy 1: Repurpose Functional Units of Code
This is the most common strategy among businesses that convert their monolithic applications to microservices. First popularized by none other than Amazon in the year 2000, the strategy includes identifying the individual units of codes that served a single purpose. These units were then extracted out and encapsulated into distinct working and independent components. In short, they modularized their existing code and then created smaller services out of them. Afterward, APIs were developed that enabled these independent services to communicate with each other without raising any in-built dependability. This solution derived by Amazon was so profound that it eventually led to the origin of AWS, which now is simplifying microservice architecture adoption for different businesses worldwide.
While adopting this strategy, you must prioritize the different modules. It is evident that even with smaller modules, development and integration will take time. This is why you should begin with the modules that are required by your team more immediately. Once you have copied its code from the monolith, develop and then deploy it independently so that work never stops.
To extract the code itself, make sure you understand and relieve the module of all its dependencies. You can do that by allowing the module to have bi-directional communications by creating respective APIs on both ends. After that, you can create its interface and then test its functioning via an inter-process communication mechanism with the monolith application.
Strategy 2: Build New Features as Microservices
Another very common strategy followed by the organization just adopting microservices is to create them anew whenever a new feature is required. Earlier, among monolith applications, developers would create functions, manage multiple dependencies, and relaunch the entire application with updated operational configurations whenever there was a requirement for a new feature. This entire process used to take days and sometimes weeks to bring the desired effect. However, building new microservices to run alongside the monolith software will allow you to start the migration process in a rather effortless manner.
This strategy was famously used by Uber that was facing difficulties in launching new features to meet the growing demand of its users. No sooner it became clear to the stakeholders that microservices were their best bet for scaling the business, the management decided to let go of the monolith architecture by 2015 and started developing APIs and microservices for all the new features independently.
Eventually, those new features were further modularized and integrated with the existing features like trip management, payment management, etc. This way, Uber managed to reach its target by the timeline they have decided for themselves, and now they are completely functioning and growing with their microservice architecture.
To implement this strategy for your business, you should start by enlisting all the new features as required by your software to meet present-day demands. Then you should set quantifiable standards to ensure that all the new microservices you develop and redevelop can all easily communicate with others. Setting these standards before launching into the development stage will ensure that none of your microservices and even the entire architecture face scaling problems even in the far future.
Strategy 3: Divide Layers into Components
This strategy is for those monolith applications that aren’t necessarily performing varied tasks but are facing performance issues due to complex integration among their various facades. It means the logical layer, data layer, and presentation layers are integrated with each other without any modularity in the code. This can cause severe delays when developing new presentation layers or while migrating to different data management solutions.
To convert such an architecture into microservices, you will need to first segregate all the layers into different components. For the front-end layer, which is responsible for handling client queries through REST APIs and HTTP requests, you can create a neat presentation layer that can easily be integrated with the remainder of the layers through robust APIs. This will ensure that whenever there is a need for creating a new front-end for a new microservice, only one component needs to get updated, following the standard procedure ass followed by the original layer.
Similarly, the rest of the components (data and business logic layers) can also be refashioned as independent components following common standards. This way, whenever you’re migrating to a different cloud system, or if you simply want to add more logical constraints to scale your business, you can do all that, in gradual steps, without taking the entire system down.
You can use either or a combination of these strategies based on your specific business requirements. However, while doing so, ensure that you employ proper change management practices within the organization by reskilling your team. You also need to invest much time in analyses and project management to see optimal utilization of the resources.
Migrating from monolith applications to microservice architecture is an intensive, time-consuming, but worthwhile endeavor. When done right, it opens up your business to scale seamlessly while bringing unprecedented efficiency to the existing processes.
Read More – https://www.matellio.com/blog/cloud-application-development-a-complete-guide/
How Matellio Helps in Your Monoliths Applications’ Migration to Microservices
Organizations that have been working with Monolith legacy systems for a long time tend to adopt temporary fixes for the problems caused by them. This can work well for as long as the team remains the same. On the one hand, this limits the scope of growth for the application, while on the other, it makes processes people-dependent, which is never a good thing for any business.
Thus, transforming such bulky monolith applications into individual and loosely connected microservices is necessary for today’s organizations. However, since the task can be rather cumbersome and complex, the transition cannot be easy unless you take the assistance of experienced professionals in this matter.
At Matellio, you will find that expertise with complete ease. Our experts have worked for multiple industry leaders in transforming their legacy systems into brand new microservices that function efficiently and independently of each other. Building such progressive solutions for our clients has enabled our experts to take on similar projects and execute them with comparative ease. They are well-versed with all the best practices involved in transforming bigger systems into microsystems. They also know how to set base standards that your organization can then keep following to maintain integrity and ease of scalability even after the complete transition.
Still not sure whether microservices are the answer you’re looking for? Let us help you understand the feasibility of the project too. Fill this form today to request a free callback from our experts. They will simplify how much your business can benefit from such a transformation and how you can set things in motion too.
