Microservice architecture: what it means and why we’re building one

It may have ‘micro’ in the name, but our microservice architecture has some major benefits.

Here at Green Flag, we’re completely transforming the technology we use to help our customers. A key part of that is building what’s known as a ‘microservice architecture’.

But what does that actually mean? And how’s it going to change Green Flag for the better?

What on Earth’s a microservice architecture?

For something with ‘micro’ in the name, it’s pretty hard to explain microservices in a short, snappy way. But, despite the fact you’re reading a long post on LinkedIn, we know you’re busy, so we’ll try.

A microservice architecture is an approach to software development. One large application is built as a collection of smaller, modular components or services. Each of these smaller parts can work on their own, or collectively as part of the wider group. ?

Importantly, each of those individual micro-services (hopefully that name’s making more sense now) is reusable and easily replaceable. You can swap, change, or make some improvements to one without impacting or shutting down the entire application.

So, that’s the what bit covered. Now for the important bit. The why.

Why this is a game-changer.

There are a lot of reasons, but the big two are speed and safety.

One of the biggest benefits of micro-services is that development speed can be much, much quicker. Our developers can reuse each micro-service as and when they need to, making development much more efficient (and reliable) across different projects.

If you need to add something to a project you’re working on, you may not need to build it from scratch anymore. If we’ve already made that thing for a previous application, we know it’s safe and reliable, so you can just take it and use it.?

A microservice architecture lets us reuse, reduce, and recycle.

Reuse: if we’ve made something that’s safe, smart, and reliable already, we can use it again somewhere else with ease.

Reduce: as we don’t need to make everything from scratch, we can reduce the time spent working on projects (which means we have more time to work on other things).

Recycle: there are no limits to how often we can use the same micro-service, which means every new micro-service we do build makes future projects a little bit simpler.

All of this is music to our ears…

Let’s talk about CDs.

CDs served a purpose. They reliably held 12 or so great songs (depending on the CD), and we could listen to them whenever we wanted. Simple.

But now, the world’s moved on to streaming and playlists. They basically do the same thing; it’s a reliable collection of songs you can listen too whenever you want.

However, they give us a level of flexibility that CDs never could.

You couldn’t permanently change one song on a CD. Track 3 was always track 3. You couldn’t change the track order, or update one track with a new, remastered version. You were stuck with something that may have served a purpose, but was set in its ways.

Playlists are a different story. Want to change the track order? Easy. Want to switch one song? Go for it. Want to take a couple of tracks and put them in a completely different playlist? You do you.

That’s what a microservice architecture is all about. Delivering a solid service, but being flexible and adaptable at the same time. And frankly, that’s pretty exciting.

Wrapping this all up.

Technology is vital in our business. Whether it’s allowing customers to buy cover or getting them help them when they need it, technology helps us every step of the way.

Software we’ve used in the past has worked, it served a purpose, but making changes or improvements was a slower process than we would have liked.

But now, with a microservice architecture, that’s changed. We’re able to do bigger and better things, and do them quickly. This is great for us as a business, it’s brilliant for our customers, and it’s exciting for us as a team, as it opens up possibilities we never had before.

It may have ‘micro’ in the name, but our microservice architecture has some major benefits.