Modernizing Legacy Applications With Microservices

In both commercial and government information technology (IT), it is common to see large, monolithic applications grow in size and scope at a rapid pace to a point where the application becomes nearly unmanageable, unsustainable, and unable to adapt to changes in the business environment. The more successful an application is initially, the more it is likely to grow in its capabilities until the application operates well outside of its original planned scope and is burdened by too many features. Many of these solutions are developed as monolithic applications where most features are tightly coupled into a singular environment. In situations like this, the monolithic environment may become an impediment to progress, slowing down the software engineering team’s ability to enhance applications and resolve defects. Microservices present a new design approach that keeps solutions small, modular, and promotes extensibility. These benefits are further enhanced when paired with serverless computing which adds tremendous scalability and performance, and drastically reduces the cost of ownership with little effort.