The Information Technology landscape is constantly shifting and evolving. Advancement in computer hardware has continually increased processing power and storage capacity, while network and internet connectivity has become faster and more widespread. Along with the proliferation of mobile devices, these factors have resulted in a global user-base for a large number of software services and applications.

Software designers and developers are not isolated from these changes; they must account for the experiences of the past as well as the characteristics of this ever-changing landscape to continually innovate in the way software is designed and delivered. The microservices architectural style is one such effort, aiming to apply some of the best practices learned in the past towards the requirements and the dynamically scalable deployment environments of certain software and services of the present and near-future.

Cloud computing has made tremendous progress in terms of cost and availability in recent years. The agile movement has brought the principles and practices of continuous integration and delivery to various organizations, and given rise to DevOps. Cultural changes continue to demand greater agility from IT organizations in responding to competitive threats, market opportunities, regulatory requirements, and security vulnerabilities. These multidimensional factors have paved the way for microservices and provided a sense of momentum for its adoption.

This reference architecture recites the basic tenets of a microservice architecture and analyzes some of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. This paper expressly discourages a one size fits all mentality, instead envisioning various levels of modularity for services and deployment units.

The sample application provided with this reference architecture demonstrates Business-Driven Microservices. The design and development of this system is reviewed at length and the steps to create the environment are documented.