Doing a simple internet search yields several millions of hits for the inventory system keys. If you are tasked to establish an inventory system for your company. This deceptively simple task could take a downturn for the worst if not equipped with the prior knowledge. With simply a vast number of selections, businesses often succumb to a state that is known as choice paralysis. During which, a decision maker from the business is overwhelmed to make a choice given the pressure, self-imposed or otherwise, of making the optimum choice. So, how exactly do we pick the inventory system that fits our business? Well, the answer can be summarized into two words. However, it might be disheartening for you to find out that those two words are it depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are in engineering or have a background\nin systems then you know just how crucial the architecture design of the\ninventory system, or any system for that matter, is. There are a few aspects by\nwhich each inventory system differs and they can have massive consequences to\nthe end product. If you are not technically inclined, then this could be one of\nthe contributing factors for your choice paralysis. In my personal experience,\nchoice paralysis starts by not having enough knowledge about the choices that\nare available to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first design choice in architecture that\nyou want to keep an eye on is if they use a microservices-based architecture or\na monolithic architecture. To the layman, a microservice is simply a fancy way\nof saying a component of the system packaged in smaller iterations. So, which\narchitecture should you lean to? As always, the answer is it depends but we do\nhave some simple rules to help you decide which one is better for your\nsituation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Monolithic systems have been the norm until\nonly a few years ago. In terms of technological advancement and stability, this\nis quite a short amount of time. What this means is that this model has been\ntried and tested and still probably dominates a lot of software spheres in the\ncomputing world today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reason this architectural design became so\nprevalent in the first place is because of it\u2019s sheer simplicity. The way the\nsoftware system is structured is by having one or more system launch points\nspread across multiple software modules. But, what makes the system considered\nas monolithic is having a singular database in the middle of the system. This\nis not to say that the database cannot be split into distributed systems. What\nis consistent is that the different modules that rely on the central database\nonly know to access the database on that single point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As was mentioned, the main gain of a\nmonolithic architecture is its simplicity. On the standpoint of the business\nowner, he will have less points of entry to worry about in terms of security\nwhich is a direct benefit from its simplicity. The entire implementation\nprocess is also a breeze compared to the microservice architecture. This is\nbecause there are only so few components that need to be installed. Finally,\nmonolithic architecture requires less effort from software engineers, thus, the\nfinal product should cost significantly less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inventory systems based on the microservice\narchitecture are probably considered the modern alternative to its counterpart.\nIn a microservice architecture, functions are divided into multiple services.\nThese services implement a feature, or even as small as a function. Whatever it\ndoes, it tries to do really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main advantage of choosing a microservice\narchitecture based inventory system is its scalability. Business owners, by\ninstinct, always look towards scaling at every turn. This is simply part of the\nmerchant\u2019s DNA. The reason why scaling is easy with microservices is because\neach microservice can be replicated so as to lessen the load for each one.\nManagement of these tasks, or the microservice taskmaster if you will, is\ncalled the load balancer which is a microservice in itself. This is a common\nmicroservice pattern that is familiar to every software engineer worth his\nsalt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because the microservice architecture is the\nmore recent offering of the computing world, it can be seen that almost every\nnew tech update is geared towards improving the model. This is another\nadvantage of using the microservice architecture. If you were worried about\nworking with an architecture based on overdue code, you can rest assured that\nsomewhere down the line any improvements would have been taken care of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, because microservices are miniature\ncompared to monolithic systems, it is so much easier to upgrade and maintain\nfrom a software standpoint. Imagine having a simple microservice that does a\nsimple function. It should be apparent that it can do that function really\nwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where the microservice architecture could be\nlacking is in terms of complexity. When microservices were first introduced in\nthe computing world, the hold up was if they were still going to be able to\ntake advantage of the database systems that they are all too familiar with.\nDatabases, despite all its faults, are an integral part of the business and any\nefforts to tamper with the tried and tested software fixture might be met with\nskepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, which architecture should you choose? To\nanswer that question, you probably end up simplifying the question into two\nsimpler ones. The first one is how ready your infrastructure is and the second\none is what your budget is. If you have a tight budget, you will probably end\nup with a monolithic architecture. And if you have limited infrastructure, you\nmight want to lean towards a microservice based architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\nAs was discussed, there are several factors to\nconsider to ensure that you pick the optimal inventory system for your\nbusiness. You might have already figured out that there is no fool proof rule\nto make sure that the system fits your b\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doing a simple internet search yields several millions of hits for the inventory system keys. If you are tasked to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[639],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n