What are microservices?

Microservices are both an architecture and an approach to writing software. With microservices, applications are broken down into their smallest components, independent from each other. Instead of a traditional, monolithic, approach to apps, where everything is built into a single piece, microservices are all separated and work together to accomplish the same tasks. Each of these components, or processes, is a microservice. This approach to software development values granularity, being lightweight, and the ability to share similar process across multiple apps. It is a major component of optimizing application development towards a cloud-native model.

But the bigger question here is why you’d want to use a microservice-based infrastructure. The goal is, simply put, to deliver quality software, faster. Using microservices is a means to that end, but there are other considerations too. Breaking your apps into microservices isn’t enough, you’ve got to manage them, orchestrate them, and deal with the data they create and modify.