With the adoption of devops product and tech needs to speak the same language. It is very common for people from different teams to use different vocabulary causing unnecessary confusion. Having a consistent argot helps a lot especially given the fact that collaboration is at the core of devops mindset.
Before we deep dive, let’s go over common terms that are used to define the offering and how they relate to each other. At the top of the pyramid, sits function; A function is a programming construct which performs specific task, when certain functions are aggregated together it forms a microservice. A microservice is a collection of functions that is capable of performing targeted business operation. When these microservices are put together it forms a service. A service is a business construct that is used to solve a real-world problem (business objective). A platform is a generic service that extends service adding hosting capabilities. A platform is a service that can host other services, by providing a mechanism to do that by exposing API’s. Platforms and services come together to form a product. A product is a collection of services provided by an entity. Product together with extended support (technical and business) is known as an offering.
Offering: It is the business manifestation of the product. This is where the whole BU comes together to support the various aspects of the technical product. It includes functions like customer support, technical support, legal support and other services that makes it a viable product.
Product: All the integrations, together with the back-office operations, services, call routing and tracking and integrations with other products that a BU offers to solve the business objective.
Platform: It is a collection of services that is extensible and customizable for different use cases.
Service: A service is a complete set of functionality that can be bundled as an offering.
Microservice: It is a component of a service that has its own team, CICD pipeline and provides a very specific business operation. It is an atomic entity from CICD perspective, thus any change to a function inside of a microservice will require a change to that specific microservice triggered by the pipelines dedicated to it, thereby not affecting the overall service.
Functions: Functionalities inside of a microservice that have no system footprint but is a part of the logical construct inside of the microservice. In the adjacent figure, the white boxes represent different functions of the respective microservice.
