Terence Bennett - July 28, 2017

In this video we host an expert panel discussion, this time addressing the topic of microservices. The panel brings to the table two thought leaders and industry experts. Joining us is Kin Lane, the API Evangelist, and our friend, Analyst, Architect, Adviser, and frequent Forbes contributor Janakiram MSV. We couldn’t get enough of following the IoT panel discussion. The discussion, moderated by VP of Product Ben Busse, took aim at the subject of designing web-scale workloads with microservices.

What are Microservices?

If microservices are an alien concept to you, don’t worry!  Janakiram explains what microservices are in the first few minutes of the panel to help kick things off. This also sets the stage for the remainder of the discussion. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that the microservices architecture is a method of developing applications as autonomous independently-deployable modules. They work together using lightweight protocols for communication, such as REST. Each module runs a unique process required for the application and can be scaled independently.

This architectural style is gaining momentum with developers. It allows agile teams to move away from traditional monolithic architectural styles. This style calls for the deployment of the entire stack to an application server. Managing change and implementing modifications using the traditional monolithic style is costly both in time and resources. Incremental change often results in rebuilding and redeploying an application entirely. Janakiram touches on the technologies driving modern microservices architectures. These include the rise of containers such as Docker and orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, as well as some of the earlier technologies that precede these.

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Benefits to Business

Janakiram set the foundation for understanding microservices, and the conversation shifts to APIs and microservices. This is where Kin Lane speaks about some of the business drivers. To understand APIs and microservices you first need to understand some of the recent history of APIs. Kin does exactly this in the webinar explaining how the business of APIs takes off in the early 2000s with several API management providers leading the first wave of APIs. This of course leads to the present second wave of APIs. This is the wave that DreamFactory is a part of. This second wave of APIs encourages new ways of thinking about legacy data stores such as databases in a consumer-centric approach. Employing a microservices approach and decoupling monolithic web apps allows resources such as legacy databases to take on new life when used with a platform like DreamFactory.

With an API-first approach more devices can connect across multiple clouds. This lets delivering the data to consumers and partners where it can be used to drive business processes and create new workflows. To summarize, the architecture of applications are using microservices and data is being delivered in this second wave of APIs. Above all, it is changing the way we do business in the evolving digital economy.

 

I would encourage you to check out the full video on youtube  and to get the scoop on Designing Web-Scale Workloads with Microservices!

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