My aunt and my CEO: Episode 110 (Microservices)

My aunt Agatha and my CEO have a few things in common.

• Limited attention span
• A hundred things to worry about
• Love for stories
• Finds technology complex (both understand “apps”)

While Aunt Agatha needs to keep up with the tech buzzwords her millennial grandchildren use, my CEO really needs to be on top of enterprise relevant technologies, in an increasingly digitizing world.

This series, My Aunt Agatha and my CEO is an attempt to explain technology in a way they may appreciate. It this episode we look at Microservices.

Microservices

For Aunt Agatha:

Remember what you told us once about your neighbour, Uncle Ben? All he does well is sit and sleep in front of the television! Microservices do one thing and one thing only. Now think about making an egg, a sunny side up.

• You open the fridge
• You open the egg tray
• You take out an egg
• You walk to the stove
• You switch the stove on
• You adjust the flame
• You take the pan
• You open the oil bottle
• You pour some oil
• You put the oil back
• You wait for the oil to heat up
• You tap the egg
• You pour the egg
• You wait for the egg to be done
• The egg is cooked
• You take the egg out of the pan

Now, imagine if you had tiny elves who specialised in each of these activities above. Every one of them is a microservice. Someone is serving you, in a very “micro-way”.

For my CEO:

Your business is a system of systems. Each system is powered by key business processes, which can be further broken down into tasks, which collectively make the system run. Each of these tasks can effectively be a microservice. When interconnected together, they reduce risk, accelerate time to market and is easier to scale for demand. Once your first couple of microservices are up and running, consider a container strategy.

Readers: Let me know what you think. I will be very happy to learn a better analogy or a simpler explanation.