Microservices opportunity: Dawn of the open API era

Abstract

This paper explores the innovative and promising software engineering concept of microservices and the revolutionary architecture that is being built on modularisation approaches for systems and businesses using them. Increasingly, microservices have been thrust into the limelight as a transformative tool in software engineering. Microservices architecture, or more simply microservices, refers to a method of designing and developing software as self-contained, deployable components that can be combined to create services. This approach to development is extremely amenable to the current environment characterised by the proliferation of online services and accompanying noise about fostering FinTech partnerships. Indeed, the very concept and approach to development, operations and maintenance of microservices is progressive. It also sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from the highly integrated monolithic core systems of Japanese banks — both the massive self-run, in-house megabank operated systems and the shared regional bank systems. This paper defines each of these architectural elements and specifies their essential value propositions, which are as follows: faster to build; easier to maintain; quickly scalable; and able to leverage advanced analytics and security services offered by cloud providers. Microservices offer potential insights on a number of levels for banks currently facing issues from how to create loyal digital communities to establishing new digital customer relationships. The Japanese financial industry and banking industry spent about three years, beginning in 2015, to develop a legal framework for Open application programming interface (API) and fostered a Japan-style consensus, laying a foundation on which to build a new ecosystem.