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Why You Should Be Talking About Microservices
Article

Why You Should Be Talking About Microservices


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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Overview
  • For Beginners

Recommendation

As organizations strive for greater agility, their software development teams often turn to microservices for flexibility and efficiency. Amazon, PayPal and Netflix, among many tech supergiants, have been leaving their monolithic structures behind and are moving to microservices architectures. For executives looking toward their own transition, a team at the Boston Consulting Group offers a clear, authoritative introduction to the technology.

Summary

Microservices consist of small, self-contained, reusable blocks of code.

Each microservice performs a specific service and has all the resources – code, data (or access to data) and interfaces – that it needs to execute its task. Developers communicate with the microservice via an application programming interface (API), which liberates them from having to know anything about the microservice’s internal functioning, such as its programming language or software logic.

A microservices architecture loosely couples microservices – including backup components in case of failure – with automation tools, thus providing a resilient structure.

Microservices enhance the development process and facilitate continual...

About the Authors

Neveen Awad is a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, and Stuart Scantlebury is a senior advisor. Firas Sleiman is an associate director and architecture practice lead at BCG Platinion.