Are the microservices the end of the ESB’s?

The microservices have questioned the future of the ESB. But how this new trend in architecture affects the Enterprise Service Bus?

The effect of Microservices on the ESB architecture

It seems that the microservices are here to stay. Every day more CIOs want to establish this type of architecture to their projects. They are perceived as the future. Most of them believe it is a generational change promoted by the “Digital Transformation” and think that the ESB are becoming obsolete. Are they right? Are the new microservices the replacement for SOA? Definitely they must be taken into account. But no. The ESB still more than alive.

However, we do need to adapt our concept of this architecture. We can no longer understand the Bus Integration as a centralized and inflexible structure for the entire company. When we talk about them today, we should think of a flexible, scalable, and well distributed infrastructure in which we ca can incorporate, implement and monitor any type of service in a quick and efficient way.

-All you need to know about microservices: Definition, Features, Advantages & Disadvantages-

When implementing an ESB architecture, we can not forget, what they have been created for. The ESB should play a role of integration, coordination, routing, and monitoring business activities. If we understanding ESB in this way, we can build applications using services or microservices to address the requirements and needs of a company. The services must be treated in an individualized way with a standardized interface to a platform with scalable automatically in real time. Thus, these services are uncoupled and scaled in a linear fashion in a non-specialized hardware.

This is the best way to understand an Enterprise Service Bus today. The microservices do not mean the death of ESB, if the latter are used in an appropriate manner. That is, focusing on an architecture where services are the protagonists and not in a centralized architecture towards the integration bus itself.

In relation to this tool, we can not forget to integrate a gateway for security services and for the exhibition of the services to external consumers. The services gateway is able to direct the integration of the Bus integrated services, the applications services, and the external cloud services.

Finally, we can not forget to reconsider if we really need this type of architecture. An Enterprise Service Bus, only makes sense if our goal is to coordinate the actions or events that are happening in our services from a set of heterogeneous systems that must integrated and presented to the upper layers.

– Ebook:Learn how to implement a microservice architecture with WSO2–

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can definitely assure that microservices do not make of the ESB an outdated technology. In fact, both are perfectly compatible and can work in coordination. Of course, for that to occur we must ensure that we work with a concept of the Enterprise Service Bus corrected and updated. If we do it this way, the microservices and the ESB are a winning combination. They have not come to kill them, they have come to be his accomplices to get a support architecture critical for the Business!

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