When Microservices Are a Bad Idea

Microservices Explained in Brief

Nowadays, Microservices are becoming increasingly popular when it comes to develop the software applications. And, It would surely be worth to know how microservices are changing the world of application development in the modern world. In a quick summary, the reason behind the massive popularity of microservices architecture is, it offers a variety of benefits, such as scalability, agility, reliability, maintainability, technology agnostic approach and much more. Even though microservices architecture is a perfect candidate of choice for modern world application development, however, still there would be scenarios when microservices would not be a good idea. What are those scenarios? We are going to uncover about them in this blog.

Reasons Why Microservices Could be a Bad Idea

Before you make a decision about whether to go with microservices architecture or not, you  must do a careful consideration and an appropriate evaluation. Although, microservices archiecture provides many good features and benefits, however, before you conclude on going with microservice architecture, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of it and find out whether the microservices architecure can help you achieve your business goals or not. Let's take a look at 3 most common reasons, per my viewpoint, when microservices should not be used.

Reason#1 : When your application is not too complex

It is always a good idea to keep the things simple as much as possible. Microservices architecture helps to break down the large complex applications to tiny services. However, if the complexity of your application is low and your application itself is not too complex then doing an over-engineering about going with microservices architecture, because everyone else is going with microservices, certainly would not be a good idea. And this for me is a #1 reason when microservices are definitely a bad idea.

Reason#2 : When there is a lack of expertise in the team

Microservices architecture is a paradigm shift in itself. It requires development teams to have totally a new perception, thinking and altogether a new approach of developing, managing, deploying modern world applications. In order to effectively employ microservices architecture in your organization, it is equally important that teams are well-educated and well-trained on the microservices architecture, its pros and cons, design decisions, design patterns and much more. Without having enough expertise, if you start your microservices journey then there are very well chances that your decision of going with microservices architecture may go south. Hence, when there is a lack of expertise in team, it would be a good idea to first have the teams ramp-up with the required knowledge about microservices, before embarking on the journey of adopting microservices architecture.

Reason#3 : When cost is the key factor

If microservices architecture comes with its own benefits to offer, it also comes with increased cost factor as well. If you do a considerable cost calculation of monolith architecture vs microservice architecture, the later one would unquestionably incur a higher cost in comparison to the developing, deploying, maintaining, monitoring monolith applications. Hence, if you are on tight-deadlines with tight-pockets on budget, microservices architecture may not be a good idea to go with.

Conclusion

We have gone through most common scenarios per my viewpoint, when microservices may be a bad idea. You may have a different opinion as well and must also have few additional common scenarios as well. I would love to hear about that. Do let me know about that by dropping me an email at techfundas.in@gmail.com. Also, in order for you to do a better evaluation of whether microservices are a good choice for your organization or not, it would be worth to understand more about what microservices architecture really means? Isn't it?