> I think microservice architectures are almost always the result of ignoring systems thinking lessons.
Pretty much. The current hope is This Time It's Different, because of various self-discovery service registries, observability approaches, more orchestration, and so on. We've arguably made some progress; FAANG's wouldn't be be able to operate at their scale if something hadn't been accomplished on that front.
But I'd wager there is a lot more systems thinking that goes on in those architectures than is being let on in public.
Management is not a substitute for leadership. Throwing together components is not a substitute for systems thinking.
There are no silver bullets, whocoodanode?
It is curiously ironic to me that we're traveling around to a similar kind of (yet still different) environment as mainframes, with well-published interfaces, inscrutable non-realtime chargeback style billing, vendor lock-in, lots of scrutiny upon fine-grained transaction monitoring, and so on. Somewhere over in a well-earned retirement, probably sits some white-beard, chuckling to themselves as they down another plate of chicken wings and quaff a fizzy umbrella drink.
Yep but my beard isn’t completely white yet and I don’t like umbrella drinks. But seriously, my position was “eliminated” just prior to the pandemic, largely because I tried to convince the CIO that a financial company with a million customer target, probably didn’t need a cloud-based, micro services architecture. I was deemed a dinosaur. He wanted the marketing buzz. They still don’t have their new product.
> ...a financial company with a million customer target, probably didn’t need a cloud-based, micro services architecture.
Only a million? There aren't hugely many scenarios where cloud-based microservices would beat a monolith at that small scale.
Where many such decisions bog down is in re-engineering existing processes into microservices, or cloud, or simultaneously both. If you're starting out brand-new in a white space, then yes, by all means dive into that if you also possess the operational expertise to run it (another area I see a lot of stumbling). Functionally lift and shift strategies into the cloud is still frequently decided upon by well-meaning C-levels even this late into the cloud era, and they are still unerringly shocked at the resultant bills. Those with massive legacy infrastructures get seduced by the promised 10X cost reductions, and overlook the fine print it will cost them 10-100X current total spend as capital spend to get there. The future is always unevenly distributed.
Pretty much. The current hope is This Time It's Different, because of various self-discovery service registries, observability approaches, more orchestration, and so on. We've arguably made some progress; FAANG's wouldn't be be able to operate at their scale if something hadn't been accomplished on that front.
But I'd wager there is a lot more systems thinking that goes on in those architectures than is being let on in public.
Management is not a substitute for leadership. Throwing together components is not a substitute for systems thinking.
There are no silver bullets, whocoodanode?
It is curiously ironic to me that we're traveling around to a similar kind of (yet still different) environment as mainframes, with well-published interfaces, inscrutable non-realtime chargeback style billing, vendor lock-in, lots of scrutiny upon fine-grained transaction monitoring, and so on. Somewhere over in a well-earned retirement, probably sits some white-beard, chuckling to themselves as they down another plate of chicken wings and quaff a fizzy umbrella drink.