Microservices and SOA

When we've talked about microservices a common question is whether this is just Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that we saw a decade ago. There is merit to this point, because the microservice style is very similar to what some advocates of SOA have been in favor of. The problem, however, is that SOA means too many different things, and that most of the time that we come across something called “SOA” it's significantly different to the style we're describing here, usually due to a focus on ESBs used to integrate monolithic applications.

In particular we have seen so many botched implementations of service orientation - from the tendency to hide complexity away in ESB's 5, to failed multi-year initiatives that cost millions and deliver no value, to centralised governance models that actively inhibit change, that it is sometimes difficult to see past these problems.