Choosing between monolithic and microservices architectures

The speed with which the microservice architecture has become popular is not surprising, given its many advantages in terms of better scalability, flexibility and agility. Several mammoth tech leaders—Netflix, Google and Amazon, among them—have already moved from a traditional monolithic architecture to micro services. But there are definitive use cases when micro services may not be the best solution. For instance, with small enterprises or start-ups that may not be able to employ the resources required to deal with the complexities that come with micro services, or when building a simple application. In both these instances, the traditional monolithic architecture is the smarter option.

Nevertheless, the trend of building monolithic applications is seeing a definite slow down, thanks to the many challenges it poses, including large code base, new technology adoption challenges, scalability, deployment, and feature update challenges, among others.

The big question ultimately is: which architecture will help you accomplish your business goals?

To answer this question, this post takes a closer look at both monolithic and microservices to understand the pros and cons of each and where each fits best.