Software Architecture Superstream: Microservices

Neal Ford: Introduction (5 minutes) - 8:00am PT | 11:00am ET | 3:00pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford welcomes you to the Software Architecture Superstream.

Vanya Seth: Have You Gotten Your Microservices Observability Right? (50 minutes) - 8:05am PT | 11:05am ET | 3:05pm UTC/GMT

• Microservices are hard. There’s a huge premium to be paid in order to leverage the benefits this architectural paradigm brings. With domain-driven design at the heart of microservices, different bounded contexts cooperate to accomplish a business process. But two important questions often arise: Is my process working fine? And if not, why is it failing? Observability can help answer them. Join Vanya Seth to learn why observability is so important. It's one of the most neglected aspects of designing a microservices ecosystem—but it shouldn’t be.
• An experienced technologist with a demonstrated history of working in the IT services industry, Vanya Seth is a strategic consultant specializing in platforms, delivery infrastructure, evolutionary architecture, and cloud native applications. As head of technology for Thoughtworks in India, Vanya shapes new pursuits, strategically advises on client projects, and formulates meaningful and resilient technology strategies. She’s a passionate technologist with a knack for solving complex problems at scale. She’s also deeply involved with open source communities.
• Break (5 minutes)

Naresh Jain: Contract-Driven Development—Escape Microservices Integration and Deployment Hell (45 minutes) - 9:00am PT | 12:00pm ET | 4:00pm UTC/GMT

• Being able to develop, test, and easily deploy a single microservice is a key indicator for a successful transition to a microservices-style architecture. The challenge arises when determining how the new microservice will interact with your existing system, meaning that it needs to undergo comprehensive integration testing before deployment. This slows down the path to life and highlights problems at a much later point in the microservices lifecycle. Naresh Jain explains how contract-driven development helps you shift left and identify compatibility issues earlier in the development lifecycle, when they’re easier to catch and fix.
• Naresh Jain is an award-winning, internationally recognized technology and product engineering expert. Over the last two decades, he’s helped many unicorns and Fortune 500 companies—Jio, Google, Amazon, JPMorgan, Hike, Directi, HP, Siemens Medical, GE Energy, and Schlumberger among them—streamline their product engineering. Naresh is the founder and CEO of Xnsio, a consulting company specializing in helping organizations build the essential capabilities required to transform their business. He’s also responsible for building ConfEngine.com, a one-stop conference and event management platform. Back in 2004, he started the Agile movement in India by creating the Agile Software community of India, a registered nonprofit society to evangelize Agile, Lean, and other leading-edge product engineering methods.
• Break (5 minutes)

Nic Jackson: Why Service Mesh Matters for Microservices Development (45 minutes) 9:50am PT | 12:50pm ET | 4:50pm UTC/GMT

• Join Nic Jackson for a session that covers some of the basics of service mesh and how adopting a service mesh might solve some of the challenges of working with a microservices-style architecture. You'll discover three core patterns that will help you to improve the security, observability, and deployment/reliability of your architecture. Learn why service mesh can be a good investment for your organization if you are struggling to keep your microservices secure and running smoothly.
• Nic Jackson is a principal developer advocate and polyglot programmer working for HashiCorp. He’s also the author of Building Microservices in Go from Packt (2017) and the upcoming Service Mesh Patterns (January 2024) from O'Reilly Media. In his spare time, Nic works on his YouTube channel, evangelizes good coding practices, processes, and techniques, and raises money for a charity he runs with his wife.

Travis Tidwell: Modernizing Your Legacy Data Systems with “No-Code'' REST API Configurators (Sponsored by Form.io) (30 minutes) 10:35am PT | 1:35pm ET | 5:35pm UTC/GMT

• With the proliferation of progressive application technologies, enterprises have begun the arduous process of migrating their legacy monolithic data management systems to new API-first data management architectures. To support this migration, enterprises have been burdened with an elevated need to hire skilled software engineers to develop the necessary API interfaces into these legacy data systems. But there is another option. Join Travis Tidwell for a discussion on how nondevelopers can use no-code tools to create configurations that drive the creation of no-code data management systems. You’ll discover that these configurations can have surprising origins, such as using common language syntax paired with an AI-connected prompt. Imagine a world where building complex data interfaces simply requires you to type “I would like a data table in my React application to show data from an SQL table.” We live in that world now.
• Travis Tidwell is the visionary founder and CTO of Form.io, a global form and data management platform for developers in every business vertical, and has been developing advanced enterprise software solutions for over 25 years. Travis has also built numerous complex data management software applications using both open source software (OSS) and proprietary/hybrid solutions. Travis's OSS contributions have attracted an impressive following within GitHub, YouTube, and Drupal communities, and he can often be found giving presentations at conferences across the nation.
• This session will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A in a breakout room. Stop by if you have more questions for Travis.
• Break (5 minutes)

Mario Izquierdo: Breaking the Monolith at Twitch (45 minutes) - 11:10am PT | 2:10pm ET | 6:10pm UTC/GMT

• Join Mario Izquierdo to explore Twitch's journey from a monolith to microservices. You’ll discover how the transition supported the company's rapid growth as Mario touches on the lessons learned, how new programming languages and technologies (and rethinking the API strategy) aided in their migration, and much more.
• Mario Izquierdo is a senior software engineer at Twitch. In his time at the company, he’s worked in a variety of systems, including the public API, infrastructure, and tools for services.

Neal Ford: Closing Remarks (5 minutes) - 11:55am PT | 2:55pm ET | 6:55pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford closes out today’s event.

Upcoming Software Architecture Superstream events:

• Frontend Architectures - May 31, 2023
• Domain-Driven Design and Event-Driven Architecture - August 16, 2023
• Data Architecture Styles and Patterns - November 1, 2023