Monolithic to Micro services Architecture: A Leap of Faith?

Organizations across the globe have built software applications which are a true representation of monolithic architecture - one in which functionally distinguishable aspects are not architecturally separate components but are all interleaved. And to answer the “so what?” of this, here are a few pitfalls usually associated with monolithic applications:

At the same time it would be unwise to brand all monolithic applications as “villains” responsible for genesis of all the problems. In fact monoliths are natural inception for any business application and some monoliths are thriving successfully. Re-architecting needs to be considered only when the “good” provided by such an application is outweighed by the “evils” of managing it.

So what are the options available to break a monolithic application such that all can “live happily ever after”?

While there is no silver bullet that solves the monolith conundrum industry pundits are increasingly advocating the Micro services architecture style. And many organizations are still viewing this as a “leap of faith” because of the lack of sufficient empirical evidence to prove that the value-addition of micro services is enough to overcome the:

Cost of transformation
Governance challenges of managing overhead of multiple teams working in parallel
Operational challenges of building and managing an environment that can support hundreds of micro services

To conclude, the above challenges can be dealt with pragmatically by opting for a transitional approach such as:

Re-factoring the application to resolve the most critical pain-points. For example, if reliability of payments transaction is the top-most problem then a solution to address the same is required rather than a big-bang adoption of micro services.
Adopting a “semi” micro services architecture in which small, “right-grained” services are built to introduce service orientation. Some of the services may still share the same runtime and/or the same database. This approach serves as a checkpoint to ascertain which functionality is really required to be built as a truly independent micro service.

About the Author

Hitarshi Buch has 17 years of IT experience in architecture, consulting, design and implementation using API, SOA, BPM and Java/J2EE technologies. He has experience in IT transformation & modernization initiatives and has provided enterprise-wide SOA-based solutions. Hitarshi is currently working as a Senior Architect in Service Transformation at Wipro Technologies and is part of Blockchain practice. He is responsible for Blockchain CoE activities and supporting client engagement.

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