7 Key Benefits of Microservices Architecture for Modern Applications

Today’s developers are tasked with building systems that are not only robust but also agile enough to keep up with evolving user demands. Microservices have emerged as a favorite among engineering teams to address these issues because they decompose applications into independent, manageable services. But how do they work, specifically? What can microservices architectures offer? And how can you adopt this paradigm within your application development team? 

If you want to know what microservices architectures can bring to your team, you’re in the right place. In this blog, we discuss the top benefits of microservices and how developers can easily embrace this approach. 

Understanding the Microservices Architecture  

Microservices are a type of architectural solution for designing complex and typically web-based applications. The software development paradigm behind microservices architectures focuses on breaking down applications into loosely coupled, self-contained, resilient and highly cohesive services. Each service is customized to address or offer a specific business capability, typically running a unique process and managing its own database. It can be deployed as well as maintained independently from each other. The services then communicate with each other through lightweight APIs to form a unified system. The level of autonomy/dependency of the services can be specified for each project to suit the needs of the intended applications.   

Based on the nature of microservices architectures, the key characteristics of microservices are: 

• Autonomy: Each service operates independently, so teams can make updates or deploy changes without worrying about impacting the entire system. 
• Scalability: Services can be individually scaled. As a result, resources can be allocated precisely where they’re needed most. 
• Cloud-Readiness: Built with distributed cloud environments in mind, microservices integrate seamlessly with cloud-native technologies. 
• Business-Oriented APIs: Services focus on solving discrete business problems, helping teams set up as well as manage clearer and more efficient development workflows. 

When looking at the origins of microservices architectures, these are considered an evolution from service-oriented architecture (SOAs), whose approach was designed to overcome the disadvantages of traditional monolithic architectures. More precisely, monolithic solutions encapsulate all functionality in a single codebase, which can lead to bottlenecks as systems grow. By dividing an application into different units, microservices can mitigate these issues by offering modularity, scalability and resilience. As such, while monolithic architectures can still be relevant for specific application, many engineering teams favor microservices when looking to future-proof their applications with a highly scalable setup. 

For a comprehensive overview of what microservices are, what they offer and when to choose them, check our free eBook ‘Explaining Microservices: No Nonsense Guide for Decision Makers’. 

7 Benefits of Microservices Architectures 

1. Microservices Enable Agility and Rapid Innovation

By utilizing a microservices architecture, teams can develop, update and deploy individual services independently of the larger application. This autonomy aligns with agile practices, as it speeds up development cycles, supports flexible scaling and updating, and promotes innovation: 

• Faster development and deployment cycles: Teams can work on specific services without being delayed by unrelated parts of the application. 
• Independent scaling and updating: Changes to one service don’t require redeployment of the entire application, resulting in faster updates. 
• Enabling experimentation and quick iterations: Microservices can support testing and refining new features or ideas with minimal disruption. 

2. Microservices Improve Fault Tolerance and System Resilience

By isolating services, microservices architectures minimize the impact of failures and keep systems operational: 

• Isolation of failures to specific services: If one service fails, it doesn’t crash the entire application. 
• Graceful degradation and self-healing capabilities: If issues arise, systems can continue running with reduced functionality to support users. 
• Enhancing system reliability and uptime: Microservices improve overall system stability and resilience. 

3.  Microservices Are Ideal for Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Microservices align with DevOps practices, such as CI/CD, supporting the delivery of faster and more reliable application updates: 

• Streamlined integration and deployment processes: Independent services simplify and accelerate deployment pipelines. 
• Automated testing and release pipelines: Testing becomes easier with smaller, modular services, ensuring quality at every step. 
• Frequent and reliable updates: Teams can push updates without waiting for the entire application to stabilize. 

4. Microservices Support Effective Data Security

Microservices can help teams improve the security of their applications by isolating services and supporting targeted protective measures: 

• Fine-grained access control and authentication: Each service can enforce its own security policies. 
• Secure communication between services: APIs ensure that communication within the system is encrypted and authenticated. 
• Minimizing the impact of security breaches: The damage from a breach in one service can be contained, protecting the rest of the application. 

5. Microservices Offer High Scalability to Support Uninterrupted Performance

Scalability is a core strength of microservices. This capability supports precise resource allocation: 

• Independent scaling of services based on demand: Services can be scaled independently to match traffic and usage patterns. 
• Efficient resource allocation and utilization: Resources are directed where they’re needed most, reducing waste and inefficiencies. 
• Maintaining optimal performance under heavy loads: Through effective scalability, it is possible to ensure continuous operations and uptime at any time, helping deliver a smooth user experience even during peak demand. 

6. Microservices Lower Costs and Increase Efficiency

Microservices can help organization optimize application-related costs by reducing waste, inefficiencies and improving resource management: 

• Optimized resource utilization and cost savings: Services consume only the resources they need, avoiding unnecessary expenses. 
• Reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs: Smaller, independent services are typically more economical to maintain than large monoliths. 
• Faster time-to-market and increased ROI: Thanks to the ability to deliver quick updates, teams can deliver value faster, increasing revenue potential. 

7. Microservices are Easy to Maintain

Smaller, self-contained and focused services are inherently simpler to understand and manage than a larger monolithic application. In particular, developers can benefit from: 

• Simplified debugging and troubleshooting: Isolated services make it easier to identify and fix issues. 
• Faster issue resolution and bug fixes: Teams can address problems without affecting unrelated parts of the system. 
• Reduced complexity and cognitive load for developers: Developers can focus on a specific service rather than navigating a massive codebase. 

Microservices vs. Monolithic Architectures: An Overview

Transitioning to Microservices Architecture Seamlessly with Payara  

If transitioning from monolithic to microservices architectures is part of your application modernization strategy, a gradual approach, such as the strangler fig pattern (also known as strangler pattern) or the ship of Theseus, is generally recommended. A stepwise implementation consists of incrementally refactoring an application by gradually building a new one that is made of microservices to decouple capabilities from the existing monolith and running it along with the legacy code to ensure operations. The development of the new system continues until the functionalities within the monolithic application alone shrink, so that the original application disappears entirely or becomes a single service in the new environment. 

Incremental refactoring requires an in-depth understanding of the legacy system and its components. In effect, developers need to carefully extract, replicate and redirect data, logic, functionalities and user-facing components within the new service. 

When evaluating technologies to shift from monoliths to microservices, there are a number of features that companies should seek. Firstly, it’s beneficial to rely on cloud-native solutions, which leverage the power of cloud computing. These are containerized and dynamically orchestrated to optimize the use of resources, helping companies to rapidly develop and deploy applications with more flexible scaling options. As such, cloud-native technologies are microservices-based and -oriented. 

Another element to look for when modernizing enterprise Java applications is technologies that leverage MicroProfile specifications. Based on the Eclipse Foundation’s open-source MicroProfile project, these specs are designed to help develop and maintain cloud-native microservices by offering ready-made APIs that address common challenges. Key components include MicroProfile Fault Tolerance, OpenAPI and Metrics.  

A solution that can be coupled with Docker is extremely useful, as this open-source software platform simplifies containerization, which is at the core of microservices architectures. More specifically, Docker helps developers to create, run, deploy, update and manage containerized applications. Finally, it is advisable to seek a solution that incorporates engines like Hazelcast Platform, which can help build and run extremely fast application services in environments that need to react quickly to huge volumes of data. 

Payara Micro for Microservices-Based Enterprise Java Applications 

Payara Services is committed to delivering valuable enterprise Java solutions and tools to application development and DevOps teams. These include microservices-oriented application server technologies, such as Payara Micro. Cloud-native Payara Micro application server was created to support microservices architectures within Jakarta EE applications. Based on MicroProfile framework, Payara Micro is smaller than most application servers, packaged as a JAR, and allows developers to easily run a microservice with a simple command:  

java -jar payara-5.191.jar --deploy user-service-1.0.war --contextRoot /  

By running this single command for each service, developers don’t have to worry about a long startup time for their services or having to repeat the installation of a server multiple times.  

Another key advantage of using Payara Micro to provision a microservices architecture is its ability to automatically form a cluster with other Payara Micro instances that are living in the same network. This is possible through the integration of Hazelcast, which powers Payara Micro’s clustering mechanisms. By default, Payara Micro instances cluster with each other using the multicast protocol, but in network environments where multicast is not supported, such as Docker or certain cloud providers, other network communication mechanisms are supported as well. Finally, users can rely on Payara Micro Docker images to create and cluster containers.  

Read more by downloading a free copy of ‘Payara Micro Getting Started Guide’. 

Payara Cloud for Rapid Deployments  

Another technology that can benefit microservices-oriented teams is one-click deployment solution Payara Cloud PaaS, a fully managed, cloud-native application runtime designed to simplify the deployment and management of Jakarta EE and MicroProfile applications in the cloud.  

Generic cloud services often require you to plumb together the various components you need to deploy your microservices application, such as Docker and Kubernetes. Unlike that, Payara Cloud abstracts away all that plumbing, leaving you to fully focus on getting your application out there as fast as possible. 

More precisely, the platform automates the deployment pipeline and handles all server-related complexities, empowering developers to deploy and run their applications with one click, by simply dropping their WAR files into Payara Cloud. As a result, users can focus on coding without having to invest time and resources for infrastructure management. In effect, the platform handles all aspects of deployment, scaling and maintenance, optimizing performance and reliability. 

Read more by downloading a free copy of ‘Getting Started Guide to Microservices with Payara Cloud’. 

To learn more about how Payara Services and our cloud-native middleware technologies are helping companies adopt microservices and leverage the benefits of such architectures, check the Rakuten Card case study here. 

Conclusion: Empowering Your Enterprise with Payara

Microservices architectures offer a variety of opportunities. Transitioning to a microservices architecture can significantly enhance the agility, scalability and resilience of enterprise applications. Beyond merely technical improvements, they can help drive experimentation, collaboration and continuous improvement in software development teams.  

By embracing a microservices architecture, development teams can not only enhance system performance but also accelerate delivery, improve security and optimize costs. However, to maximize the potential of this paradigm, the right tools and technologies are essential. By leveraging Payara Services’ robust tools and solutions, such as Payara Micro and Payara Cloud, companies can accelerate their adoption of microservices and empower their teams to deliver innovative, scalable and high-performance future-oriented applications.