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The Pitfalls of Treating Microservices as a Blanket Solution
Factors to consider when deciding on a microservices approach
In 2016, I was part of a microservices strategy group within my employer. Our task? Be ready to answer when clients asked, “How can microservices revolutionize our business?”
In 2022, I was at a talk at AI Summit in NYC, where speakers from USPS and Unilever were proud to announce they had reduced their service count to 900 and 1300, respectively, and were now aiming to get that much lower.
What happened over those six years?
In this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of using microservices in software development and consider some factors to consider when deciding whether this approach is right for your team.
The Benefits of Microservices
The idea of a microservice is attractive: a deployable application with a single responsibility, such as shortening URLs in a body of text or sending emails. By abstracting your logic and building up a few dozen (or hundred) of these small services, you can create new functionality by simply stitching them together.
However, it’s important to be aware of the drawbacks of this approach. Microservices introduce complexity and overhead to a system through the added moving parts and communication requirements between distributed components. Additionally, microservices can lead to code duplication, as each service may contain similar or identical functionality. Testing, debugging, and deployment can also be more challenging due to the system's distributed nature.
Finally, microservices can be more resource-intensive, potentially leading to higher resource utilization and costs. At a recent talk at the AI Summit in New York City, USPS and Unilever reported reducing their service count to 900 and 1300, respectively, and aiming to get even lower.
The Pitfalls of Treating Microservices as a Blanket Solution
One of the biggest problems with microservices is that they are often treated as a blanket solution without considering a given project's specific needs and constraints. Regardless of the size of the…
