Reflections on the future of microservices

When we build cloud-native applications with microservices in a distributed environment, there is a critical need for robustness, scalability and flexibility. But you will find plenty of bumps in the road while getting there.

Jason Letchmanan Jason Letchmanan

Although microservices is a simple concept and solves so many problems, there seem to be some bumps in the road to implementation.

How far the digital world has come. I reflected on this recently when I needed to replace a lost ATM card. As soon as I arrived at the local branch of the “World’s Best Digital Bank” (for two years running!), I was ushered into an enclosed booth where a large life-sized screen immediately lit up and a lifelike virtual AI assistant appeared.

After a whirlwind seven minutes on this virtual speed-date, my spanking new ATM card popped out through a slot below the screen. As I left the booth, I couldn’t help but wonder how much we have progressed digitally and how long this, and other manual processes took in the past.

Microservices: Bumps in the road?

This led me to thinking about microservices; a straightforward concept that has conversely helped to turn many an implementation into a completely complex engagement. In fact, in a Forrester Analytics survey, 43% of firms surveyed said that they have embarked on one or more microservices implementations, but only 13% said they are production ready. So why is crossing the finish line so elusive?

When we build cloud-native applications with microservices in a distributed environment, there is a critical need for robustness, scalability and flexibility. But you will find plenty of bumps in the road while getting there.

Like: How do you find a new service in a new container with a different IP address? In a distributed cloud, how do you secure service connections? How do you ensure high availability and that end-users are not affected when your containers go down? How do you collect contextual data for users across hundreds or thousands of microservices?

Ensuring these capabilities largely requires very high-end technical skills – something only non-mainstream developers will possess, and conversely something that your average coder will be twiddling their pencils over for quite some time.

Cue service mesh – the infrastructure layer that helps manage network connections between microservices as well, you guessed it, a “mesh.” A service mesh is the industry’s answer to finding other microservices, scaling in the cloud and securing service connections – impressively basking in the spotlight as the solution to the first three dilemmas asked above.

But hang on just a second. What about the issue of collecting user insight and the ability to personalize application responses? What about enhancing security and control to protect this user information?

Hello AppMesh

The solution here is to wave goodbye to service mesh and cue webMethods AppMesh® – Software AG’s offering for managing microservices and APIs together, largely forming the foundation for delivering next-generation applications.

With AppMesh, application creators have advanced security at their fingertips, a way to get information about the user, the ability to reroute to appropriate services based on that information, and a way to obtain analytics for usage patterns. In addition, immediate delegation of policies and rules being assigned to the service is possible. All this culminates in developers breaking free of the struggle of managing microservices and focus solely on their area of expertise – the business logic.

This unified approach to managing applications in the cloud brings three very tangible benefits, namely:

  • Deep Visibility. Understanding how customers are using your applications, to optimize the roadmap and create dynamic, targeted responses
  • Centralized Control. Central governance, robust monitoring and advanced security to ensure enterprise-class stability in the cloud
  • Spur Growth. Deliver key initiatives faster with built-for-purpose microservices runtime and a policy-based nerve center

If you are thinking about embarking on a microservices journey, or even if you have already started, take a step back and watch the webMethods Innovation Series: Building Cloud-Native Apps with Microservices webinar on April 15th at 0800 ET here and at 2pm ET (click below).

You’ll be glad you did.

If you are thinking about embarking on a microservices journey, or even if you have already started, check out the webMethods 10.7 release coming out this month — webMethods AppMesh is one of the highlights.