Microservices Use Cases and Real-World Examples

The microservice architecture foresees the opportunity to build applications that consist of loosely-coupled services. Every microservice has a separate database and can be built using different technologies. The key characteristics of microservices-driven apps are:

• decentralized architecture
• great scalability
• failures resistance

Businesses actively adopt the microservice architecture due to its many benefits. The foremost advantages of using microservices are:

• self-sufficiency of an application
• utilization of different technologies
• apps are easy to scale and update
• improved continuous delivery
• simplified developers' onboarding

MICROSERVICES ADOPTION STATISTICS

Many companies widely adopt microservices. According to the report prepared by Statista, more than 81% of companies of different sizes already use microservices.

Microsoft has conducted a comprehensive survey on the use of microservices. The presented results state that the top five microservices architecture use cases by app types are as follows. 

1. Data analytics — 45%
2. Database applications — 41%
3. Customer relationship management — 38%
4. Finance — 34%
5. HR applications — 31%

Roughly 92% of the microservice architecture adopters are satisfied with the chosen solution.

WHEN CHOOSING MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE

Microservices have a lot of benefits that businesses value. However, many companies start small with monolithic apps because releasing a monolith is easier and faster. Hence, microservices aren't the best solution for all companies. Feel free to explore the most popular use scenarios when a business needs to use the microservice architecture.

The microservice architecture is the right choice if you:

• expect your startup to grow at a high pace
• are not satisfied with product development time
• want to use various technologies
• can afford to employ several teams of developers
• strive to develop a highly reliable and failure-proof application
• want to be capable of modernizing your app fast

WHY SWITCH TO MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURE

Many applications have the monolithic architecture because it foresees the opportunity to develop and launch an app with basic functionality quickly.

Check out the comparison of the time required to launch an app with the microservice vs monolith architecture.

Launching a monolith application with basic functionality requires less effort and time. When an app evolves, maintaining and releasing new features becomes more challenging. Hence, many companies consider switching to the microservice architecture.

The top scenarios to change an app's architecture to microservices are the following.

• You plan to incorporate different technologies
• You need to scale up an application at a high pace
• The complexity of developed software increases constantly 
• You need to increase an app's resilience

MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE USE CASES

Due to the many benefits of the microservices architecture, it is widely applied to develop software solutions in different industries. The top five microservices use cases are the following.

1. Outdated Applications 

The use of microservice applications helps software engineers update legacy applications that can't help achieve business goals. They can break a monolith into microservices and apply new technologies to update separated parts of an application.

2. Apps with Complex Logic

Applications like social media platforms and e-commerce web apps have a lot of components in their architectures. The development of applications with complex logic is one of the foremost microservices use cases. The microservice architecture foresees the opportunity to develop many various features using distinctive technologies and connect them.

3. Data-Heavy Applications

Applications that have to process a lot of data fetched from different resources usually have a lot of dependencies. Microservices help use resources wisely, reducing the complexity of an app's architecture.

4. Apps that Process Real-Time Data

The amount of data needed to be processed in real-time and stored may change drastically. Applications built using the microservice architecture can allocate the required amount of data storage and computing power to selected services upon demand.

5. Highly-Resilient Applications

Apps built for industries like healthcare or finances should maintain 100% uptime and store data securely. With the help of the microservice architecture, developers can create highly-resilient and secure apps. Even when one or more microservices are down, the entire application can keep working, providing access to the rest of the functionality.

Below, you will learn more about the top three companies that use microservices.

REAL-WORLD MICROSERVICES USE CASES

Due to the many benefits of the microservice architecture, a lot of companies have switched to microservices to overcome major challenges and achieve their business goals.

The top real-world examples of microservices adoption are:

• Amazon — over 1000 microservices

• Netflix — over 700 microservices

• Uber — over 500 microservices

Down below, you will find the real-world microservices architecture use cases.

Amazon

Like many startups, Amazon was built as a monolith because creating and launching an app with a monolithic architecture is easy. However, the company started growing rapidly, so it needed to develop many new features and scale its online platform fast.

Amazon's codebase became extremely large and complicated in 2001. The company had to implement all the changes hundreds of software engineers released. Developers had to spend a lot of time resolving all the conflicts and merging all the changes into a single version.

Moreover, they were required to rebuild the codebase and run a lot of tests to ensure that a new version of the product worked correctly. It led to an unacceptable product delivery timeline. Striving to simplify the pipeline, the company's software engineers developed a revolutionary idea. They decided to decompose the monolith.

They thoroughly analyzed the codebase and allocated functional units that served the only purpose. Developers pulled the items out to create independent microservices and connected them using API integrations.

After this, they thoroughly analyzed all the product development processes. Amazon engineers started developing automation solutions to eliminate idle time in their CI/CD pipeline.

Netflix

Netflix is the youngest business case for microservices adoption. The first web app launched by the company was a monolith. The service became popular and started growing extremely fast. 

Hence, the company faces a lot of challenges with processing all the requests submitted by its customers. It led to many database failures.

The company decided to replace its on-premises database with a cloud-based solution from Amazon Web Services. Cloud servers can be easily scaled horizontally to get the required amount of resources required to process all the requests. 

Developers were required to decouple the monolith architecture to move the database to the cloud. After noticing the positive impact of using the dissociated architecture, the company has spent two years switching from a monolithic architecture to microservices.

Uber

Uber was launched as a monolith with one codebase that handles all the processes. The monolithic architecture implied all the required functionality to connect drivers with passengers, process payments, manage trips, etc.

When the company started growing at a high pace, it experienced a lot of challenges with scaling its services fast. The monolithic architecture needed developers to redeploy the codebase to implement new changes. Even minor changes affected the entire codebases, so it was necessary to conduct comprehensive testing to release new features.

Being unsatisfied with the number of developer resources and time every new feature consumed, the company decided to break its application into several microservices.

The taken solution has helped the company to scale up different services like billing, trip management, driver management, and notifications independently. Developers don't have to examine and update the entire codebase to release minor updates.

CODEIT'S MICROSERVICES-BASED APP DEVELOPMENT EXPERTISE

We at CodeIT have outstanding expertise in developing applications using a microservice architecture. Let's learn more about the microservices-based solution designed by our team.

Problem

A client has reached CodeIT, requesting our team to create an application with a large assortment of services. The client wanted to develop a super app that eliminates the need to use many distinctive services by sports fans.

Solution

After analyzing all the requirements, we have decided to pick the multiservice architecture.

Using a lot of different technologies and programming languages, we have developed a feature-rich solution. The three core services are:

• a messaging app
• an info portal
• a blockchain-driven marketplace

Thanks to applying the microservice architecture, we managed to use diverse technologies, and our experts developed many features and connected them into one application. The top five features created by our team are as follows:

• Personalized aggregation of news
• Text, audio, and video messaging
• Live-video streaming
• Blockchain-driven marketplace
• Social media functionality

Users can access various helpful tools, content, and news using the application and send messages in one place.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The microservice architecture enables developers to connect a lot of services developed using different technologies. The approach has a lot of advantages, making more than 81% of companies consider using the microservice architecture. The satisfaction rate of microservices adopters is roughly 92%.

The five top microservices use cases are:

1. outdated applications
2. apps with complex logic
3. data-heavy applications
4. real-time data processing
5. highly-resilient applications

The most popular companies that switched from using the monolith architecture to microservices are Amazon, Netflix, and Uber. The microservice architecture of applications developed by these companies uses hundreds of distinctive services connected into united systems using HTTP/HTTPS requests or APIs.