Why Business leaders should care about Microservices

In order to succeed in the digital line of business, it is important that business leaders should invest considerable time to understand the application architecture layouts even if it means exploring on the outside of their comfort zones. Succeeding in such an attempt will likely bring both agility and innovations to the organizations they are working in. 

In any technology organization, the underlying infrastructure is a critical factor that determines the success of the digital initiatives that the company undertakes. Almost always, it is observed that this does not fall under the gamut of core strengths for the business leaders/executives of the organization. And so, there exists a critical gap that needs to be filled here. 

For the business leader, having the foundation and technical knowledge in place propels technology to become an asset for the organization and this forms a very vital item in the digital success of the organization. 

What are the most important points that business leaders should understand about modern application architectures? For this, we need to first clearly understand the meaning of the term modern application architecture. The next step is to understand why it is the critical part of successful digital business and transformation.

Any application architecture of today can be called the technology foundation or the infrastructure of an organization that is in digital business. Typically, any modern application architecture is built on microservices, AI, cloud computing, Agile deployment capability, and security. 

Business Leaders and Technology

Just as people, facilities and partnerships form business assets, so is technology. Some business leaders who are constantly wrestling with digital businesses and their problems on a daily basis have realized this to a certain extent. 

Nawab Ali Sajid - Quote That: As a CEO, investor, and coach, I firmly believe that "Successful business leaders recognize that in the digital age, paying close attention to microservices architecture is not just a choice; it's a strategic imperative for agility, scalability, and sustainable growth." Here's my opinion on why it's essential:

Scalability: Microservices allow businesses to scale their operations more efficiently. Instead of monolithic systems that require substantial reworking when scaling, microservices enable businesses to add or update individual services independently, reducing operational friction.

Faster Innovation: Microservices promote agility and innovation. By breaking down applications into smaller, manageable components, businesses can develop, test, and deploy new features or services more quickly, responding rapidly to changing market demands.0

Improved Resilience: Microservices enhance system resilience. If one service encounters issues, it doesn't bring down the entire application. This ensures that critical business functions remain operational, even during disruptions.

Better Resource Utilization: With microservices, resource allocation becomes more efficient. Businesses can allocate resources precisely where needed, optimizing infrastructure costs and enhancing overall performance.

Enhanced Customer Experience: Microservices enable personalization and customization of services, leading to a more tailored customer experience. Businesses can adapt their offerings based on individual customer preferences and behaviors.

For the organizations to move into quick action and solve their customers’ problems or meet the escalating market/customer demands, what is that needs to be done? The correct answer for this question is: the business leaders must themselves be smart about the technology that is crucial for the success of their business, including the modern application architecture, which in a majority of cases is microservices.

Download Ebook for FREE "How to choose the best microservices vendor and trim the cost"

In order to check the claims of a partner or vendor that promises good results for your business, it is vital that the business leaders should have in-depth knowledge of the technologies that form the crux of their businesses. This also requires a situation where the business leader should have the trust and confidence in a technology executive who they can turn to inside their organization. 

Business leaders usually find it easy to dump all the responsibilities on the IT department of their organization. It is imperative that they get to know the technologies in detail so that they can rest on solid ground and they can thereafter draw out a roadmap leading to the success of the business. 

Read our blog "What Kind of Challenges Can Microservices Help You Overcome"

It is not in the nature of business leaders to get excited about a rise in expenditure. However, when it is about investing in digital operations, these same leaders understand clearly that there is no chance of achieving the business goal without effecting changes to systems, processes, and people that are involved in fulfilling the experience. In the case of mobile apps, business leaders were excited as far as changes with respect to APIs and databases were concerned. The apps did not provide any value without these changes. 

All these come with involving the business leader during the project scoping project requirements road-mapping stages. This helps them to understand and establish business priorities. Further, they seek and accept feedback about the operational and system changes that are required to deliver the results that are charted out. 

Consider the example of an application that allows completing a mortgage application or opening a user account. When fully involved in the road-mapping stage, the business leaders understood that the back-end transaction systems have to be modified in such a manner so that the process for the customers in the front-end is a simple and easy one. The back-end investments were thus set off by lower onboarding costs, higher onboarding success and much faster time-to-revenues. 

Read our blog The 5 Best Microservices Technologies List
 

Building Modern Application Architecture and the Role of Business Executives

While building modern application architecture is the domain of hard-core technologists, it is vital the business leaders are involved in these processes to decide investments and other decision-making functions. The involvement of business executives will likely be new and unfamiliar. The question that remains is how deeply should they be involved? How much should they align with the IT department when this is happening?

Read Also: Spring Boot for Microservices: The New Age Framework for Your Apps

Here, business leaders need to be business-smart while being tech-savvy at the same time. Up till now, technology is considered to be the responsibilities of the CIOs and tech leaders and the IT department of the organization. However, now a larger part of the responsibility rests with the CEO; they have to know the key suppliers’ quality and the amount they are required to invest for the technology.

In this context, it is observed that the new-generation CEOs that have assumed positions recently in digitally-driven organizations are tech-savvy and are doing a good job in this respect.

Download Now: Porting from Monoliths to Microservices

From the point of view of business leaders, they can put their foot forward when they have the support of a technology partner who can give them the knowledge in the easiest way. Many tech-savvy companies that have taken the cue now opt for a twin-leadership approach in which they pair a tech leader together with a business leader to work out the goals and parameters for technology-based business initiatives. 

This type of two-in-one team helps to build a roadmap and fund the investment as well. This combination of relationships and technical acuity result in establishing strong foundations for technology-led initiatives. 

Guidelines for Business Leaders

Business leaders are usually involved in projecting the business impact of the technology. When considering the ROI on the microservices architecture, the business leaders can keep the following points in mind to secure the budget in order to make the investments.

Read our blog "Event Driven Microservices with Spring Boot"

The first point is to first break down the investment in terms of its different contributions to the business.

• Revenue that is generated directly
• Consolidated cost structures or the difference between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ costs; this can sometimes be very large and the improvement in employee productivity
• Business agility – ‘Rapidly Build and Test’ method will bring in some direct financial benefits because of abilities such as introducing new services and implementing them faster. This in turn makes for quicker revenue returns. 

Another subtle financial benefit ensues: when you extend the life of capital investment by making an existing system available to take care of and solve new problems, some money is generated. A modern application architecture when deployed allows organizations to build new capabilities by harnessing the latent power of the transaction system infrastructure that is already present. This brings in considerable revenue without involving major capital costs. 

Closing Thoughts

APIs and microservices are here to stay as parts of the modern application architecture. Business leaders of today are expected to embrace these to grow their digitally-driven organizations.