Microservices Architecture – What is it, and why should I care?

Nerd alert! For a while I’ve postponed my chance to geek out about one of the latest buzz words in the telecom industry. Over the last few years, the telecom industry has been rampant with technical terms such as virtualization, network functions virtualization (NFV), orchestration, and lately containerization. Salespeople throw terms around like there is no tomorrow in hopes of getting prospects engaged and excited about their products. One term that is trending now is microservices architecture (MSA). Now, I did say I was going to geek out, but I promise not to get too technical, so hopefully, you will make it to the end of this blog.

In general terms, MSA involves separating each platform/software functionality into a container that runs on its own. What is the point on that, you ask? Well, let me give you a typical example. A Unified Communications platform (UC) supports multiple features such as calling, conferencing, collaboration, and instant messaging. Imagine that you have a surge in video conferences; the typical UC platform uses a monolithic architecture such as a Telephony Application Server (TAS), which runs all the services. So, the peak in video conferencing will basically cause the entire platform to run out of hardware resources affecting everything else. The only way to address this issue is to increase the hardware resources of the platform as a whole, even if the other services do not require additional resources. MSA allows you to separate all these functionalities into separate containers and scale them independently, allowing much better use of your hardware resources. This is a basic example, which actually does little justice to all the benefits of MSA, but it’s a practical one.

Looking at it from a different perspective (a less geeky one), MSA also offers an exciting business opportunity. If all services on your platform are interfacing using standard APIs, then you could slice parts of it and provide those as individual services. Again, using a UC platform as an example, you can take the conferencing microservice and allow your customers to build their own conferencing client and interface only with this specific container. The same applies to calls or instant messaging. Thus, MSA can enable offering both a turnkey application, such as UC, or simply selling the “sliced” services. Another MSA advantage is that each service is agnostic and performs a limited number of tasks without interfering or being affected by the others. This isolation enhances the capability to monitor, troubleshoot, and manage individual containers.

To get more specific, and still looking at MSA from a business perspective, the Dialogic® BUZZ™ UC platform is a great example of MSA in action. A customer may initially purchase Dialogic BUZZ to be used as a UC platform, and can also offer UC as a Service (UCaaS) to their customers if desired. Simultaneously, they could reuse the same platform and turn it into a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS). This flexibility will allow our customers to diversify their offer and above all, give them the ability to innovate on their own. The microservices distributed architecture is a crucial enabler for this business model and the reason why Dialogic chose to take this path. From a technology vendor perspective, MSA will also allow Dialogic to continue innovating and adding functionalities without disrupting the existing deployment. New features become new microservices, which are seamlessly added. It’s a DevOps dream! (There I go again, getting carried away.)

These are exciting times. Dialogic recently released Dialogic BUZZ 4.0, which leverages a partial microservices architecture. Over the last few months, we have been turning BUZZ into a full MSA-based platform. This migration process continues, and our customers will continue to reap the benefits. Dialogic BUZZ has become simpler to install, manage, and scale – and soon will also allow customers to monetize it in different ways. While we are in this process, we are already planning the next step – enhancing the microservices to a full "Service Mesh" topology. But that's a story for another day…

Source: https://blog.dialogic.com/blog/microservices-architecture-what-is-it-and-why-should-i-care

2024 Buyers Guide

Get Listed

Consultancies

 

1.)

Mpathy Plus Mpathy Plus transform service, improve performance and provide operational support. We work in all areas of customer service and contact centres from initial strategy, feasibility studies, business cases, project management through to operational reviews, resource planning etc. We are independent and have vast experience of implementing, managing and changing contact centres and the customer experience.

2.)

PCA Advisors Ltd Contact Center Sales - growth and marketing strategies I work with contact centers to position their companies to take advantage of opportunities that exist for them. We also work with their existing sales team to improve their communication and hunting skills. 'Growth' is our greatest ability.

3.)

Vads PT VADS Indonesia provides consultancies with trainers, modules, a development programs for individuals and/or teams. Types of consultancies provided by PT VADS: Knowledge Process, Transformation Consultancy, Customer Services, Contact Center, Leadership, Interpersonal Development, Motivation, Training for Trainers and Digital Marketing.

4.)

SCC Services Group Contact Center Operations Performance Management In today’s competitive business environment, contact center and marketing professionals are constantly challenged to manage a growing business, achieve superior performance levels and at times are asked to support services and products that are becoming more complex. Faced with this reality, the consulting disciplines that SCC Services Group focuses on are operations management and service delivery excellence in the customer service, contact center and brand marketing arenas. Our consulting practice puts emphasis on: - Contact Center Operational Assessments - Human Capital Management - Organizational Structure - Brand Marketing - Strategic Planning - Sales and Customer Care Tra... (read more)In today’s competitive business environment, contact center and marketing professionals are constantly challenged to manage a growing business, achieve superior performance levels and at times are asked to support services and products that are becoming more complex. Faced with this reality, the consulting disciplines that SCC Services Group focuses on are operations management and service delivery excellence in the customer service, contact center and brand marketing arenas. Our consulting practice puts emphasis on: - Contact Center Operational Assessments - Human Capital Management - Organizational Structure - Brand Marketing - Strategic Planning - Sales and Customer Care Training - Technology Selection - Deployment of Technology in Customer Contact Centers. Our client engagements are directed at identifying projects that will have the highest return in terms of profit, productivity, customer and employee satisfaction. In addition to delivering high customer satisfaction, Contact Center management teams are also requested to maintain or reduce operating budgets and get more production from their staffs. To this end contact centers must find ways to become more efficient and flexible then ever before. Based on today’s business requirements and the vast growth in Customer Contact Centers there is demand for expert guidance to assist organizations with the many tactical issues of the day, strategic planning and to act as a resource on current and future projects. If your organization has a need for Contact Center Consulting, Brand Marketing, Human Capital Assessment and Development, Application Development and Integration, Outsourced Services or Sales and Customer Service Training, SCC Services Group brings a unique brand of expertise to the table based on years of “real life” experience and is in position to fill this demand for start-up, growing or under performing operations.

5.)

The Taylor Reach Group Established in 2003, The Taylor Reach Group is an award winning, call, contact centre and customer experience consulting and advisory firm. The company is based in Toronto and has offices in New York, Atlanta, Washington, Ottawa, London, Bangalore, Hong Kong and Beijing. We are vendor agnostic and do not partner with technology or outsource agencies. The only one who pays us are our clients. Each of our consultants possess a minimum of 20 years of ‘hands-on’ call/contact center operational management experience. We do not sell the pyramid, the seasoned experts you deal with through the sales process are the same people who will complete your project. Taylor Reach has worked with contact cen... (read more)Established in 2003, The Taylor Reach Group is an award winning, call, contact centre and customer experience consulting and advisory firm. The company is based in Toronto and has offices in New York, Atlanta, Washington, Ottawa, London, Bangalore, Hong Kong and Beijing. We are vendor agnostic and do not partner with technology or outsource agencies. The only one who pays us are our clients. Each of our consultants possess a minimum of 20 years of ‘hands-on’ call/contact center operational management experience. We do not sell the pyramid, the seasoned experts you deal with through the sales process are the same people who will complete your project. Taylor Reach has worked with contact center and customer service organizations as small as 4 agents and as large as 24,000. We have worked with leading brands, not for profits, governments and advised industry leaders in multiple verticals. Our services include; Customer Experience Assessments and Benchmarking Contact Center Strategic Assessments Contact Center Audits and Benchmarking Training Curriculum Design and Development Technology Selection and Acquisition Operational Model Development Omni-Channel, Multi-Channel Outsourcing/Offshore Suitability Assessments In-Sourcing Assessments Home Agent Assessment Process Improvement Knowledge Management Site Selection Organizational Design & Development Best Practices Whitepapers & Research Projects, More than 15,000 call/contact center agent positions globally employ Taylor Reach designed contact centre operational models; we have the knowledge and experience to help your center management.

 

View more from Dialogic

Recent Blog Posts:

Scaling in the Cloud – Avoid Flying Too Close to the Sun	December 17, 2019
SD-WAN’s Relationship with UCaaS	December 12, 2019
Hearing and Seeing the Difference in UC Platforms	November 7, 2019
Microservices Architecture – What is it, and why should I care?	October 31, 2019
Panning for “Killer Apps” in the Gold Rush of 5G	February 14, 2019
The Dialogic BUZZ UC Platform Swiss Army Knife	October 24, 2018
DialogicONE - IoT Solutions	October 22, 2018
Dialogic PowerMedia MRF – A Solution You Can Depend On	September 25, 2018
Enabling WebRTC with the Dialogic PowerVille Load Balancer	July 16, 2018
Telecom Meets Digital: The Importance of Establishing Controls	May 24, 2018