Are Microservices still relevant in 2026

Microservices architecture has been a significant trend in software development over the past decade. This approach, which involves breaking down applications into smaller, loosely coupled services, has promised greater scalability, flexibility, and ease of maintenance compared to traditional monolithic architectures. However, as we step into 2026, are Microservices still relevant?

The Evolution of Microservices

To understand the relevance of microservices, we must first look back at their evolution. You see, microservices seem evolutionary when compared to the limitations of monolithic architectures. You see, in a monolithic system, all components are interconnected and interdependent, making it difficult to update, scale, and maintain. Microservices, on the other hand, allow developers to break down an application into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. Which is why, we should take a look at 12-factor app methodology.

12-factor app

The 12-factor app methodology was first presented by Adam Wiggins circa 2011. It aims to build SaaS apps and cloud-native applications designed for portability and resilience when deploying to the web. The principles generally are:

• Automated Setup: Allows the installation and preparation of the related environment with automation methods such as Azure Automation on Azure or AWS OpsWorks, using a declarative format to produce an identical result (always reaching the desired state).
• Portability: The application should be able to run in different OS environments with maximum portability.
• Loose Coupling: Applications should be loosely coupled so that they can be deployed in the cloud.
• Consistency Across Environments: The development environment and production environment should be identical, only allowing different target databases while maintaining the same structure.
• Continuous Deployment: Enables continuous deployment to maximize the agility of deployments.
• Scalability: The application should be highly scalable during peak times without changing the configuration tools.

Be mindful of states: stateful vs stateless

These are the primary reasons for the transition of traditional applications to microservice architecture. However, be mindful when you start to redesign or begin the design phase to apply the principles of microservice architecture:

Use independent modules so that each can scale at its own pace. Different technologies can be used in the same application. For example, you can call a RESTful API service developed in both Node.js and .NET web API within the same application.

Why chose Microservices

When transitioning from traditional to microservice architecture, understanding state management is crucial. Here’s why:

Microservices should use independent modules, allowing each to scale at its own pace. This means you can mix technologies, like calling a RESTful API developed in Node.js alongside a .NET web API within the same application.

1. Scalability: Microservices enable horizontal scaling. Individual services can be scaled independently based on demand, leading to more efficient resource utilization.
2. Flexibility and Agility: With microservices, teams can work on different services simultaneously without waiting for others to complete their tasks. This parallel development leads to faster releases and better agility.
3. Fault Isolation: In a microservices architecture, the failure of one service does not necessarily bring down the entire system. This fault isolation improves overall system resilience.
4. Technology Diversity: Microservices allow teams to choose the best technology stack for each service, promoting innovation and the use of the most suitable tools for specific tasks.

Those challenges lead to the downfall

While microservices architecture has gained immense popularity for its flexibility and scalability, it comes with significant challenges that can lead to its downfall in certain scenarios. For some workloads, the combination of microservices and serverless environments may actually increase expenses. A recent example from Amazon Prime Video and Audio was that they decided to revert from a microservices architecture back to a monolithic architecture due to this very complexity.

Well, here are some personal thoughts :

1. Managing numerous independent services can be daunting, requiring sophisticated solutions for issues like service discovery, load balancing, and inter-service communication. These elements need careful coordination and advanced tools to ensure seamless operation, which can increase the difficulty of managing the overall system.
2. Maintaining data consistency across multiple services can be difficult, and distributed transactions, while theoretically possible—are complex and often discouraged in a microservices setup. This can lead to data integrity issues if not handled correctly.
3. Deploying and monitoring a large number of services necessitates the use of advanced tools and practices. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, service meshes, and centralized logging are critical to manage these tasks effectively. However, setting up and maintaining these tools can be resource-intensive
4. Communication between microservices over a network introduces latency, which can negatively impact performance. Also back to my point of #2, the data transfer and storage costs are also hidden in solutions of this nature.

The landscape of Microservices is evolving

As we evaluate the state of microservices in 2025, several trends and technologies have emerged. Here’s my personal summary of some key trends that influence the relevance of microservices:

1. Kubernetes and Containerization: The rise of Kubernetes and containerization has made deploying and managing microservices more straightforward. Kubernetes provides robust orchestration capabilities, simplifying the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications.
2. Serverless Architectures: Serverless computing, where developers focus on writing code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure, has gained popularity. Services like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions allow developers to build and deploy functions as microservices. This approach reduces operational overhead and can complement microservices by handling specific tasks.
3. Service Mesh: Service mesh technologies, such as Istio and Linkerd, address many of the networking challenges associated with microservices. They provide features like load balancing, traffic management, and security, simplifying the management of inter-service communication.
4. Observability and Monitoring: Enhanced observability tools have become essential in managing microservices. Solutions like Prometheus, Grafana, and Jaeger help monitor, trace, and visualize the behavior of microservices, providing insights into performance and aiding in troubleshooting.
5. API Gateways: API gateways play a crucial role in managing traffic between clients and microservices. They offer features like request routing, rate limiting, and security, ensuring smooth communication and protecting the backend services.

organizations which design systems  are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.  – By M. Conway – Conway’s law in 1968

Decoding real-life microservices architecture

As Microsoft defines, a microservices architecture is a system that contains a collection of small, autonomous services. So, let’s walk through and decode a real-life microservice architecture.

Key principles in action

Here are some principles that I summarized to follow when deploying microservices on Azure:

• One app server per microservice.
• Each microservice has its own data persistent store (backend).
• Each microservice has an independent life cycle.
• No dependency on other modules.
• Small and numerous microservices facilitate fast and frequent deployment.
• Strongly loosely coupled, acting as small elastic units within the distributed system.
• Isolation from the resources of other applications.

The direct outcome of this philosophy looks like this :

My personal analysis

You see, modern cloud-native applications designed for microservice architecture should be managed in a version control tool like Git, following the principle of “a codebase = 1 repository.” This shows dependencies and systems should be isolated and declared explicitly and independently to facilitate maintenance and administration tasks.

Additionally, code should be separated from configuration files, meaning that code should contain only variables and not application or environment settings. The application should be strictly stateless, with each module sharing nothing with others. Generally, the front end does not store any data. instead, data is always in the backend, possibly exchanged through middleware such as RESTful APIs.

Each application must be autonomous and self-contained, adhering to the principle of “one process, one microservice.” This approach allows microservices to be well-structured, making it easy to add or delete processes. During peak times, processes can be scaled by increasing instances, and during downtime, services can be rapidly stopped and started, ensuring a quick return to normal operations.

Checking the integrity of event and flow logs is crucial when implementing a monitoring strategy. Since each microservice operates independently but functions as part of a whole system, log implementation should be event-based. Microsoft Azure provides log analytics services and other metrics for monitoring each microservice effectively. Sounds a bit complex right? Let’s take a look at a prime example of microservices!

A prime example of microservices: e-Shop

One of the most interesting parts of the workshop analyzes a real-life example built with microservices on Azure called eShop by Microsoft. This is a microservice architecture-based application that implements an e-commerce website using a services-based architecture with .NET Aspire.

This project contains different types of microservices and can be managed by API gateway:

Although the orchestration layer is more complex, so the overall systems that you could read from above principles lead the final architecture looks like this :

If you’re a  .Net developer or anyone who is experienced in Microsoft technical solutions, you would definitely benefit from one excellent book that is recommended by Microsoft : .NET Microservices Architecture for Containerized .NET Applications. This book explains in detail how to develop the microservices architectural style and set up the golden stamps of microservices.

Are Microservices here to stay?

As we look towards the future, several factors will determine the continued relevance of microservices beyond 2024. Cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and serverless are still going strong, and their emerging with technologies like AI and machine learning, leading to smarter and more adaptive systems. And in this emerging section, AI-driven monitoring and self-healing capabilities will further enhance the robustness of microservices architectures.

Please also don’t forget the rise of edge computing, where data processing occurs closer to the source of data generation, will complement microservices by enabling low-latency, real-time applications. Above all, as regulatory requirements evolve, microservices architectures will need to incorporate robust security and compliance measures, with solutions that provide seamless integration of security protocols.

It’s almost a no-brainer that Microservices will continue to stay!

Improving the developer experience is needed. Tools and frameworks that simplify development, testing, and deployment will encourage adoption and innovation.

Looking forward

Personally, I greatly enjoyed the latest deployment methods and creative styles in designing application architecture brought by cloud computing. Cloud computing is boosting our business today. If you like reading stories like this, follow me @melonyqin here on Medium and subscribe to my newsletter. See you in the next one! Thanks for your continued support. Let’s stay tuned!