Lightbend conducted its research in summer 2016 on a sample of 2,151 Java programmers working at different companies throughout the world. The results revealed that thirty per cent use microservices architecture when making software, and that twenty per cent are planning to use them in projects their companies are due to begin in the near future.

What are microservices?
The shift towards software based on microservices and containers is a quiet revolution that has been taking place in recent months on the global IT market.

“Microservices offer an alternative to the monolithic style of software development. By building applications using microservices architecture and containers, programmers can select and work on individual elements without affecting the whole application, which is what happens in the old, inflexible approach. This shortens the production cycle and can reduce costs by as much as sixty per cent. There is also more flexibility and innovations can be introduced faster”, explained Rafał Głąb, Business Technology Unit Director responsible for the development of Onwelo Microservices Lab, which is Poland’s largest microservices skill centre.

As Rafał Głąb underlines, software based on microservices architecture allows the server infrastructure it is installed on to be used even ten times more effectively. In addition, opting for microservices ensures that the application is not dependent on the platform, the technology, and the skills of the IT team.

Microservices dominate in the world of DevOps and the cloud
The growth of microservices is the force making ever faster software development and modification a necessity, and managers of companies in almost every sector in the world are demanding this accelerated pace from IT departments and software providers. They want their companies to grow and they want to seize the opportunities offered by the digital revolution.

Company IT managers are coping with these demands by introducing new working methods to their teams, for example the agile approach, which makes it possible to build functioning software components in a matter of days or weeks – despite changing requirements or requirements that are not as precise as they might be. Then there’s the DevOps approach, which is about programmers, system administrators and implementation teams cooperating to adapt the software to the needs of the users. The use of new technological solutions, such as microservices and containers, which make the work of programmers easier and speed it up, is also widespread – said Rafał Głąb.

Seventy-eight per cent of DevOps teams are already using microservices architecture for software development. This was one of the results of research conducted by Logz.io into 360 DevOps teams from all over the world. Nginx, who analysed a sample of 1,825 programmers working in the DevOps environment from around the globe, has recently returned similar results. The study found that sixty-eight per cent of respondents were either using microservices already, or considering using them.

Rafał Głąb of Onwelo sums the situation up in this way, “At their current rate of growth microservices could become the world’s most widely-used software-development method – and in such a short time that it will probably mean breaking some sort of record!”.

More information on building and managing services in the world of containers and microservices is available here: www.onwelo.com/microservices.