What problems are there in using microservices in your e-commerce?

In last week's article, we discussed the importance of moving your e-commerce from monolithic to microservices, or to a headless approach, if you think your e-commerce will scale.

We review the characteristics that make these systems, perfect systems if you want to position yourself in the market.

However, it is not all good news. By this I mean that neither the microservices in e-commerce nor the headless approach in e-commerce serve everyone, or for all your projects.

Today we will review some of these challenges and some less positive characteristics, but important to know, and take into account if you have really decided to take the step. Understanding challenges allows you to be prepared and anticipate problems.

The bad

Moving from a monolithic architecture to a microservicese-commerce platform requires a lot of investment and effort in your organization. Turns out, you've already invested heavily in systems, licenses, infrastructure, and know-how - your team and organization move like fish in monolithic water.

Telling them now that they have to develop their own pipelines, or their own data stores, can be traumatic for them, for the organization, and obviously for your e-commerce.

And since resources are scarce, you end up using the same old database, because it works.

Then you may find yourself with unnecessary connections, problems to contact, negotiate, or find the necessary teams to launch the new microservice, since the APP is now complex enough to require new operational skills, which you may not find in your development teams.

In the same way, you find yourself very quickly in a the situation in which the database of your e-commerce is not yours, nor do you control it, you do not know how to manage and, what is worse: you do not always know how everything has controlled the subject of data protection and privacy. If it is.

Also, since you need to have all this control in the same place, or the same dashboard, you end up having a monolithic distributed system that helps you know which teams do what, which teams use the same database, the same libraries, etc, etc. ..

The ugly

If the bad seemed ugly to you, know that " everything can get worse ." If you want to opt for microservices for your e-commerce, you should know that microservices are synonymous with the complexity - of communications and operations. "In microservices, complexity is not lost, it is only transformed."

If you really want to follow the architecture, it is worth knowing that you will get to the point of developing microservices to search for microservices, thus increasing the chances of losing control, as we discussed earlier.

You and your developers can find yourself in a really difficult situation to manage, without knowing ( monitoring ) what is being developed, and what processes are running.

This has immediate consequences when you want to add new changes and see them implemented quickly.

A small independent change does not mean an independent change, and this can contradict one of the biggest goals of microservices in e-commerce: faster time to market.

The worst can happen when you want a change to a microservice that your developers are not aware of and your provider no longer exists. You will have a major problem.

Aligned with "the ugly," GDPR compliance is a must and in the context of this article, a problem.

With microservices, you have the personal data of your e-commerce customers distributed in different microservices, with different databases that must comply with the GDPR regulations.

Conclusion

To conclude, I still believe that if you have e-commerce that will grow a lot and be competitive, you should bet on microservices.

However, know "the bad" and "the ugly" of microservices before starting the new e-commerce project, have a plan for the DevOps culture, to monitor, for integration tests, cyclical dependencies, etc. ., is essential, because the future of your organization may depend on it.

Microservices are not the miracle solution in the development of your e-commerce, and your new project may take much longer than expected. Therefore, my recommendation is that you start by having data on the structure that makes the service work.

If you need help in defining your new project, with data the structure that makes the service work, do not hesitate to contact us.