3 Pitfalls Everyone Should Avoid With Microservices

Previously I mentioned that I'd submitted, together with colleagues, sessions on a diverse range of topics for Red Hat Summit 2019.

Early this year we heard back about one session being accepted.

Last week we spent an hour with around fifty of our closest microservices friends debating many of the pitfalls everyone should avoid with microservices, and it was a lot of fun! Before we talk about the session, some background.

Last year with my good friend Roel Hodzelmans, we presented a session that was pretty popular and ended up in the top 10% of all Red Hat Summit 2018. The rest of 2018 we spent our time touring various venues, conferences, customers, and partners to share the story behind 3 pitfalls everyone should avoid with hybrid multicloud. Attendees everywhere asked us if there were more pitfalls and we have listened.

While the follow up session on this hybrid multicloud talk did not get accepted, we'll be sharing our pitfalls insights around customers efforts with microservices.

It was rather nice to have a few attendees approach us both before and after about how they attended our session last year. They searched the agenda for Summit this year specifically looking for anything related to the theme '3 pitfalls...'

The format was in a room built for discussion, so when we set up the room we posted a white board by the door with an ask of our attendees. You needed to sit on the right or left based on having microservices running in production, or not. This request generated a few laughs, but it immediately changed the atmosphere from coming to listen, to having experience on one side teaching the curious on the other side.

The session followed a set of slides containing our controversial opinions in the form of statements that were put forth to the room for comments. Each one opened up active and enthusiastic discussions, often based on one side having gone through the pain to production delivery and the other side asking their questions as they now work towards their microservice solutions.

The reactions after the session indicate we're on the right track with our pitfalls, as many were based on our customer interactions over the years.

The session abstract is given below for your reference.

3 Pitfalls Everyone Should Avoid With Microservices

The daily hype is all around you. Microservices are a necessary step along the path to integration for a digitally successful future for your organization. The choices you’ve got to make don’t preclude the daily work of enhancing your customer’s experiences. From containers, cloud, multicloud, and beyond, microservices are the core infrastructure ensuring your organization's flexibility in the digital world. Join us for an hour of power, where real customer experiences are used to highlight the three top lessons as they transitioned their integration infrastructure into modern day microservices.

Thanks so much for joining us and hope you enjoyed our session.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to have one of us stop by and talk with your teams about pitfalls and microservices.