Microservices at Scale – it’s a team game
“It never gets old – there are always fresh and interesting things to learn.”
Peter Nicholson
I’ve been working in software development and information technology for a few decades now. It’s still fascinating to me. Like the universe we live in, the field of software development keeps expanding at an accelerating pace. The industry keeps innovating, inventing new tools, technologies, languages and techniques. What there is to know and learn keeps growing. It never gets old – there are always fresh and interesting things to learn.
While there are always new technologies to discover and master, sometimes the industry rediscovers old ideas that are worthy. The idea of building small software building blocks that do one thing and do it really well is not new.
These days we call them “microservices”, but really this idea is present in 1970’s Unix technology which continues to be as relevant today as ever. Although the idea of reusable building blocks is not new, microservices are being mixed in new ways.
“In a wealth management context, microservices can tackle core registry functions and easily scale to many millions of transactions.”
The word “micro” in microservices might imply to some that small services can’t do the really large or complex tasks that require high performance. In fact, microservices are very well suited to scaling quickly to meet even the most demanding applications. That’s why the likes of large companies such as Amazon, Netflix and eBay rely on microservices to run their business. In a wealth management context, microservices can tackle core registry functions and easily scale to many millions of transactions. Like integrated circuits in the electronics industry, microservices help to encapsulate complexity, and can be combined to solve all sorts of business problems.
Combining these reusable building blocks to solve large scale business problems in a way that is cost effective, scalable, observable, reliable and secure is not without challenges.
Breaking down monoliths solves lots of problems like scalability, reliability, flexibility and agility. But building microservices at scale requires some new technologies and skills, and FinoComp is on that journey now. FinoComp has chosen technologies like React, Kubernetes, Docker, Micronaut, Kafka, Helm, Terraform and other cloud technologies to help solve these challenges. Each of these technologies works together to solve business problems in a way that older generation technologies just can’t compete with.
“Technology alone doesn’t solve technical problems. Software development is a team sport.”
Peter Nicholson
In fact, software development is a surprisingly social occupation. You talk to people every day. Communicating within and across teams is critical to solving problems. Thanks to technology though, you can be anywhere in the world – something that’s particularly useful in the post COVID19 world of lock-downs and Zoom and Teams calls. Despite COVID challenges, FinoComp continues to thrive.
If you love innovative technology, solving interesting puzzles, building high performance reliable software, in a team environment, FinoComp is great place to do that. There are lots of different ways to contribute that suit your skills and interests, and opportunities for growing those skills over time.
