Building scalable systems with microservices in a composable DXP: A comprehensive guide

Highlights

You’ll learn:

How to build scalable systems with microservices in a composable DXP including:

• Microservices: Splits your application into more minor services that are easier to manage, deploy, and scale.
• Composable DXPs: You select best-fit digital solutions and integrate them with APIs and microservices.
• Scale with DXP: Manage user experiences on multiple platforms to create more customized digital solutions.
• MACH-compliant: Microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, headless solutions enable you to scale.

Boost your business by building a scalable system using microservices in a composable DXP. Start building today. Request a demo.

Keep reading to learn more!

With 85% of enterprises stating they already use microservices somehow, it is safe to assume they are using them to build scalable systems. Microservices are essential in building scalable systems in a composable DXP as they enable you to break down an application into smaller units that are easier to manage.

Composable DXP, microservices, and scalable Systems

Businesses can integrate microservices and composable DXPs to scale digital experiences. Microservices boost composable DXP agility and efficiency. They split an application into small units that interact via APIs, while a composable DXP integrates best-of-breed solutions using a modular approach. Both of these systems use APIs.

A scalable system can take on extra work on demand. The system assigns resources to itself, allowing it to handle more demands or spikes in traffic. When integrated, microservices and composable DXPs can create customized, flexible, and scalable digital experiences.

Understanding composable digital experience platform

It integrates different tools and services at its core, allowing you to build a custom tech stack. This flexible approach is easy to scale and enables companies to deliver personalized experiences.

To build one, select technologies that align with your business needs, then integrate them and optimize the digital experience platform.

Exploring microservices

They use an API-first approach that simplifies modern software development. Microservices enable you to separate concerns, with each service focusing on a specific task. That makes it easier for you to manage and scale it. It also means you can isolate faults and fix failing services without disrupting the setup. 

Building scalable systems with microservices

By design, scalable systems can handle extra workloads. They expand to accommodate growth without reducing performance. In microservices, each service scales independently, and you do not need to deploy or alter the whole system to do it. That enables you to assign resources only to specific demands. 

It is essential to know how to build a scalable DXP when you anticipate growth in data volume, traffic or user base. That way, you can maintain optimum performance, and your system remains responsive when you grow and innovate. 

The role of microservices in building scalable systems

When building scalable systems or DXP, microservices break things up into smaller units that you can modify or update with relative ease.

Each service focuses on one part of the business. It is a granular approach that makes it easy to manage each service. Also, you can scale any part of the service with only resources assigned to it. So, microservices promote speed and resource efficiency when building scalable systems.

Building scalable systems with microservices in composable DXP

Integrating microservices into a composable DXP allows you to leverage a granular, flexible, and modular approach to deliver tailored digital experiences. It enables you to select tools and services that best fit your needs.

It is also essential to build with fault tolerance in mind. That way, you get a scalable and responsive system that is always available and consistent.

Essential concepts in building scalable systems with microservices 

Understand the architecture: Microservices enable you to build software systems where each service runs in its process and communicates with other services via lightweight protocols, like REST APIs.

Decompose system: A scalable system must have services with separate and defined functions. In addition to making them easy to manage, you can scale each one if and when required.

Define boundaries: Domain-driven design (DDD) enables you to assign a function to each service based on business logic. This makes them easier to track, manage, and optimize.

Load balancing: Without a load balance system, a surge in traffic can derail the whole system. Load balancing distributes traffic across various instances of a service to ensure it does not overwhelm a part of the system.

API Gateways: They are a single entry point that manages all data requests and routes them to the right services. They offer central control and security, such as rate limiting and user authentication.

Service discovery: This tool deals with how services find themselves and interact. It has a central server enables you to get a global view of the business. Easy to keep things in check.

Use a message queue: Message queues and event streams help you manage asynchronous communication between services. Amazon SQS, RabbitMQ, and Apache Kafka are reliable tools to use.

Deploy a service mesh: Service meshes manage service-to-service communication, making securing interaction between services easier.

Design for failure: With design patterns like circuit breakers and retries, you can ensure that the system remains available and does not go down even if a service fails.

Deploy with containers: Container tools like Docker enable you to deploy and scale microservices, while orchestration tools like Kubernetes help you manage container lifecycles and strategies.

Monitor: Through monitoring and logging, you track the system’s health. It is proactive, ensuring you can catch any issues as they happen. That way, you can optimize performance.

Best practices for microservices in a composable DXP framework

Implementing microservices in a composable digital experience platform requires a strategic approach:

Define boundaries: Ensure that each service does only one thing. Assign specific business functions to each one. That gives clarity and makes them easy to manage as you can quickly identify what role they play. 

Design for failure: To build a scalable system, you must equip it to handle failure. Design for failure so that if one service goes down, it does not affect the entire system.

Security: Follow industry standards and compliances and have security policies and protocols in place.

Monitor and log: These proactive mechanisms help you track the performance of each microservice, ensuring you can optimize them or deal with any issues that may arise.

Case studies

Waltz Health

Waltz needed an API-driven platform on which technical and non-technical users could create templates incorporating branded assets, product data, and pricing. 

Going for Contentstack’s composable DXP enabled them to achieve that. Its headless approach and integrations enabled it to streamline patient care. They built new experiences faster and delivered new portals within 75 days.

Sunil Kripalani, Chief Technology Officer, said, "The flexibility that’s baked into Contentstack isn’t just enabling our staff to work more efficiently, it’s a true business enabler that’s helping us consider new service offerings. Using APIs, we can pull in new data streams and create unique experiences for our provider partners, as well as within niche markets."

Follow Waltz’s success story with a composable DXP solution.

Berlitz

Like many big businesses before them, Betlitz had a disjointed strategy with regions and messaging competing. 

With Contentstack’s composable DXP solution, they now enjoy harmony with the headless CMS, which enables them to add new products and apps as business needs change. They now enjoy 133% faster page load speeds, 76 websites launched in different languages, and 16 times more websites launched.

“Being headless, we’ve been able to build really fast websites, and our Web Vitals are really good,” Gorman explained.

Read more about how Contentstack’s composable DXP solved the pains of a 145-year extension for Berlitz.

FAQ section

What is a composable digital experience platform?

It is a cloud-native digital experience platform with a modular approach. It consists of various best-of-breed solutions that work with microservices and integrate via APIs.

How do microservices help in building scalable systems?

They promote horizontal scaling, where you can add new service instances to handle more traffic, which helps the system scale better. They also split large applications into smaller bits, enabling you to scale each unit as required.

How do you make a microservice scalable?

You can either do it by horizontal scaling, where you add more service instances to manage the load increase, or by vertical scaling, where you add extra compute resources such as memory and CPU to manage the extra load.

How do you ensure that microservices are scalable and resilient?

Follow best practices, use retries and circuit breakers, set boundaries, design for failure, and monitor the system to ensure it can be optimized. Also, make sure to set up security protocols and API gateways.

What is the difference between composable and microservices? 

A composable integrates the best-fit solutions to address your business needs. At the same time, a microservice organizes an application into a suite of small services that you can easily manage, deploy, and scale.

Learn more

There are many benefits of building scalable systems. As you grow, you can expand and respond to changing customer demands. You can also respond to industry and tech shifts. With microservices and composable DXPs, you enjoy a modular and flexible approach that integrates best-fit solutions for your business needs. Request a demo to get started.