Foreword

"Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation."
- Satya Nadella

I’ve spent my last three years at Microsoft, running customer feedback programs for Azure microservice architectures and tooling. I believe this microservices framework is a crucial spark of innovation in web development. In an agile world, we need an agile framework on the cloud that is working for us, processing individual actors and services. With this new power, we can deploy a framework that scales, improves resiliency, greatly reduces latency, increases our control of security, and upgrades the system without downtime. Microservices becomes the optimal architecture in our new cloud-based development environment, and it can result in major cost benefits.

Gaurav Aroraa, Lalit Kale, and Manish Kanwar masterfully whisk us away on a journey to explore the history of microservices, and they carefully and thoroughly take us on a tour of the architectural design concepts that accompany the evolution of microservices, from when James Lewis first coined the term to our current tools and implementations. The book starts at a high level, with detailed diagrams and descriptions that explain the architectural scenarios and uncovers all the values you’ll receive with a microservices design. At this point, you might ask whether the book is about microservices architecture or a how-to guide in .NET development. Importantly, the authors transition us into the practical knowledge of translating our current applications into this bold new world of microservices. On that journey, they do not speed up. In other books, you move so fast that you simply cannot enjoy the view (or understand what you’re supposed to be learning). You might just implement the code and pick up a few tactics along the way, mostly copying and coding by autopilot. But the authors teach each concept and step in the development process with the attention and focus that it deserves.

Personally, I have had the privilege of knowing Gaurav for a few years now. He’s a Visual Studio and Development MVP (Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional award) and a key leader in the Microsoft cloud development community. I’ve worked closely with him on his powerful contributions on TechNet Wiki. In this book, I see a dedication and passion from Gaurav, Lalit, and Manish shine through. This book needs to be written. I am excited when I find gems like this. The authors thoroughly go through every detail, every parameter, and every consideration in tackling this weighty concept of a microservices architecture in .NET development. Read this book, skip ahead where you’re knowledgeable about the given information, absorb the authors’ knowledge, and share the book with your business contacts. The development community needs to adopt a microservices approach, and this book is a powerful advocate on that journey.

Ed Price

Senior Program Manager

Microsoft AzureCAT (Customer Advisory Team), Microservices and Cloud Development

Co-Author of Learn to Program with Microsoft Small Basic