Modernizing Architecture with Microservices Process Orchestration

Over the past decade, application architecture has evolved. We began with the monolithic architecture, but it did not address real-world application requirements. Consumers demanded a response to domain-driven design, infrastructure automation, distributed teams, continuous delivery, and continuous integration (CD/CI).

Evolution’s answer produced the microservices architecture. As a result, microservices is viewed as the successor to API-first application development. 

What is microservices architecture?

Microservices architecture describes the approach to designing singular software applications as a matrix of services that can be isolated for development and deployment. Each service can run its processes independently and communicate with other apps and systems as it is self-contained. Moreover, the microservices architecture is considered the ideal environment for automated deployment and process orchestration. 

Each microservice would operate as an independent component and responsible for a designated function. Besides, the services are distributed, secure, and in sync. The desired scenario is for every element to interact with other components to ensure a comprehensive understanding of and support all network activities. It’s common to divide each project team into smaller teams to manage a single microservice in terms of development.

Why are microservices the preferred architecture for process orchestration?

Many organizations, whose applications have been previously based on a monolithic architecture, are now moving them to microservices exactly because the advantages of a microservices architecture have already been proven and realized by other players on the global field.

The monolith architecture feels outdated in the always-on world. A microservice architecture offers better scalability and integration with third-party services compared to a monolith architecture. Microservice ecosystems allow for concurrency, which is a crucial aspect of a scalable application. In terms of process orchestration, every transaction in a process is managed by a separate microservice. If one microservice experiences a failure, it does not disrupt the entire process. 

Within the monolithic architecture style are many inter-dependencies; this isn’t the case with microservices architecture. Unintended service failures will not spread throughout other services. Since microservices architecture is modular in nature, it ensures isolation of each service and resilience and continuity of services managing processes.

Companies can use microservices architecture to orchestrate processes based on their priorities. Microservices are much more flexible relative to the monolith style. Since each microservice is a separate entity, teams can develop the service to fit their preferred requirements at the time. Additionally, every interaction between microservices is handled with fluent APIs that produce flexibility in deployment. Teams are not directly dependent on each other. Every microservice can be utilized in any way that is needed at the time and can be modified without affecting any other microservice.

There are two main types of communication:

• Asynchronous: An asynchronous call can be initiated from a thread, but it isn’t a requirement. Further, asynchronous calls do not prevent the program from accessing code execution. When an asynchronous call returns from an event, the call reverts to the callback function.
• Synchronous: In synchronous calls, code execution must wait on an event before moving forward. The event must return a response before the code executes. Therefore, the callback executes all its tasks before returning the call. 

When you consider actual process orchestration, it involves managing multiple commands across multiple services. With microservice process orchestration, the centralized controller works every microservice interaction, including event transmission and response. The result is a request and then response paradigm. The product is also multiple processes that can be coordinated in conjunction where singular service failures do not cause severe impact to the entire process. Moreover, microservices process orchestration addresses networking challenges and observability. It is a transparent approach making it easier to optimize every process. Also, when using synchronous processing, the services coordinate flow efficiently.

Transitioning from monolithic to microservices architecture makes it easier to orchestrate processes since each application is broken down into individually-deployable services. It takes a combination of microservices and process orchestration to manage processes in a sustainable and repeatable way. When achieved, processes flow seamlessly. It’s time to take the right approach. Download our whitepaper to learn more about microservices process orchestration.