Dear  Participant!

My name is Holger Knoche, and I am an external PhD student at the Software Engineering group at the University of Kiel in Germany. My research is concerned with the introduction of Microservices to existing software systems, with special emphasis on runtime performance and transactionality.

Microservices are an architectural style which currently receives a lot of attention. One reason for this attention is that Microservices are very successfully employed by well-known companies like Amazon and Netflix. Due to these successes, many software companies wonder whether Microservices are a promising option for their own software products.
Microservices are not solely a  technological approach. They are closely connected to modern approaches to deploying and running software, and to the organizational structures endorsed by DevOps. Thus, the introduction of Microservices can cause major changes to a company, and a large number of challenges may arise in such an endeavor.

The goal of this survey is to explore the reasons for introducing Microservices, as well as to identify the greatest potential challenges. In addition, I wish to investigate the particularities of introducing Microservices to existing software systems, especially with respect to runtime performance and transactionality.

Your answers are of course collected and analyzed anonymously. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me under hkn|at|informatik.uni-kiel.de.

Thank you for participating!
Holger Knoche