I have to admit that I’m skeptical whether non-technical companies will successfully execute a software development strategy routed in microservices.

There’s a long history of software development teams seeking modular and reusable code and services. We chased object-oriented programing, generic methods, and service-oriented architectures, leaving a trail of technical debt behind. How will this time be different?

I spoke to Tyler Johnson, CTO at PrivOps, on Modernizing to Cloud-Native Architectures and Microservices in Episode 26 of 5 Minutes with @NYIke. Tyler recognizes, “Modularity has been around for a long time and is a core underpinning of technological development.” He shares several non-software examples of modularity in the episode and explains why getting the architecture right is both a product and operational innovation.

Tyler also shares this key insight, “”Containers is the infrastructure modularity, microservices is the application layer modularity.” Marrying microservices with containers, service orchestration, CI/CD, IaC, and other DevOps practices is key to more successful companies. It’s not important to build modular code. It’s equally important to automate deployment and modularize infrastructure architectures.

I’d also add that cloud native, and microservices architectures are not the only game in town. Organizations should explore low-code technologies, public cloud services, and SaaS to deliver capabilities without getting into heavy-duty coding. In other words, build fewer things, but when developing a proprietary capability with long-term business benefits, build them to be reused and scaled with microservices.

A key to effective microservices will also not just be in how organizations build, deploy, and maintain them. An effective strategy must include API gateways to manage access, continuous testing, and standardizing observability.

Learn more by watching the episode, and please sign up for the channel!