Microservices Architecture for CMS: The Building Blocks of an Agile Digital Marketing Ecosystem

The decentralized, distributed nature of the Internet has changed our thinking about how we develop technology. Remember when teams would take months, even years, to bring new, gigantic products to market? Now, we have agile development teams working in short, iterative sprints delivering constant updates. This new way of thinking extends beyond the development process to the actual technology itself, which is moving from monolithic to modularized. This type of architecture is known as microservices, a description that signifies the modularization of services and software into smaller and completely independent components.

Microservices are a way to break up complex systems into smaller, manageable pieces that communicate with each other via APIs. This type of architecture not only makes technology more scalable but also more flexible. Part of the drive towards a microservices architecture is fueled by the adoption of cloud technologies, which have enabled companies to go to market faster at a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches.

In terms of scalability, microservices can be combined and customized for a technology stack that is perfect for the customer, and that stack can grow or be streamlined as needed. As for flexibility, if a microservice fails, there is no need to update the complete software stack, as it can be swapped out and replaced within a live production scenario without any downtime. It’s not necessary to redeploy the entire application because you are simply updating one unit, so it’s easy to spin up a new copy and seamlessly integrate it into the marketing technology stack.

With the advent of microservices, IT and Marketing are no longer bound to a specific technology when considering their marketing technology stack. And given that there are any number of frameworks available on which to develop microservices, gone are the days when you have to decide between a Java or .NET approach. The result is an integrated, open solution based on individual components that are 100% tailored to the needs of your business.

The ability to transform a marketing stack from monolithic to nimble via microservices is a huge breakthrough because it gives customers agility, flexibility, and scalability while saving an incredible amount of development time. It also increases productivity and the ability for companies to deliver on its promises to customers and helps create the best customer experience in less time. So while this is a technological development, you can see there are some terrific business benefits from microservices.

The truth is, the monolithic approach is simply out of date for today’s customers, who expect easy integration, powerful functionality, and the flexibility to customize and scale as needed. These benefits are just not possible from all-in-one suites where the more you invest, the more complicated and inflexible your system gets. A microservices platform, on the other hand, stays agile and flexible regardless of how big it gets because of the way it’s architected.

With microservices, developers also have the ability to continuously deliver updates to customers. It’s said that Amazon performs 50 million software deployments a year, which would have been impossible before the advent of this kind of technology. This kind of “fine-tuning, always optimizing” approach of agile development empowered by microservices gives companies a much, much faster time-to-market for new product ideas and a far greater ability to deliver on customer demands.

e-Spirit has maintained an innovative approach to development since its inception, demanding that our customer solutions be agile, best-of-breed and interoperable. And because of that, we fully embrace the microservices approach. With its open architecture, FirstSpirit is expandable and adaptable—a critical factor for keeping up with fast-changing digital technology trends.

Our latest product release, FirstSpirit CaaS (Content-as-a-Service), is a perfect example of building a microservices-based solution. FirstSpirit CaaS provides the kind of auto-scaling capabilities expected from a critical component of your digital marketing technology stack. It allows unstructured content to be dynamically pulled from FirstSpirit and delivered to the front end of any system, application or thing via a universal CaaS interface, making “content everywhere” publishing a reality.

FirstSpirit CaaS also provides other advantages—new touchpoints, channels and devices can be added with previously unheard-of speed allowing customers to be reached not only faster, but also with a lower expenditure of time and money. Whether IoT smart devices, websites, mobile apps, digital signage, social media, single page applications, portals or other software—the content can be quickly and easily shared and used, freeing it from the limits of conventional content management while helping companies master the challenges of rapid digitalization and digital transformation. This enables interoperability for content at every single touchpoint possible without having to build complicated integrations and fulfills the “content everywhere” promise that every Marketer must deliver on today.