Microservices in Azure
Simplify the development of your distributed cloud applications. Rely on built-in, enterprise-grade security and auto-scaling.
What are microservices?
Microservices are a software architecture style in which applications are composed of small, independent modules that communicate with each other using well-defined API contracts. These service modules are highly decoupled building blocks that are small enough to implement a single functionality.
The purpose of microservices architectures is to make it easier to develop and scale applications. Microservice architectures foster collaboration between autonomous teams and enable them to bring new functionalities to market faster.
Why use microservices?
Build services independently
Microservices-based applications are built as a collection of highly decoupled services that handle a single action. Teams can independently build, verify, deploy and monitor each service.
Scale services autonomously
Independent services can be scaled based on their respective demands without affecting the overall performance, rather than scaling the entire app up or down.
Use the best approach
Development teams gain the flexibility to use the best deployment approach, language, platform and programming model for each service.
Isolate points of failure
By isolating potential problem areas to individual services, microservices architectures improve security and reliability. Services can be replaced or retired without affecting the overall structure.
Deliver value faster
Teams can deploy small, independent modules quickly. Several teams can work on different services at the same time and put new features into production faster.
Build better and faster with microservices in Azure
Simplify your application lifecycle
Boost agility and collaboration and reduce time to market by using Azure managed services and development tools.
Rely on a trusted platform
Develop secure and reliable applications on a compliance-certified platform.
Scale to your needs
Improve overall performance by enabling automated and fully managed scaling on demand.
Gain flexibility
Adapt faster to business needs by choosing the best approach and technology for each service.
Select the best microservices approach for your business
Service Fabric
Get automatic scaling, rolling upgrades and self-healing from faults with a custom-built microservices framework.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Use a fully managed Kubernetes service to handle provisioning, upgrading and scaling cluster resources on demand.
Azure functions
Build apps with simple, serverless functions that scale on demand based on the number of executions – without managing infrastructure.
API Management
Expose and publish specific parts of your applications as an API, regardless of where the implementation is hosted.
Get an end-to-end development experience
Visual Studio
An IDE for developing modern apps – with advanced debugging capabilities.
Azure DevOps
A cloud-based solution for application lifecycle management that handles hosted code repos, issue tracking, load testing and automated builds.
Visual Studio Code
A lightweight, source-code editor for editing and debugging on any OS.
Customers are doing great things with microservices in Azure

Citrix Cloud streamlines with single sign-on (SSO) access based on Azure Service Fabric
"When we started the Citrix Identity Platform, we wanted to try something different and thought a pure microservice model may keep us more honest. The goal was to make the platform truly CI/CD, and that's exactly what we were able to do because of Service Fabric."
Thomas Hammond, Principal Software Engineer

Siemens Healthineers moves more computing to the cloud to support value-based care development
"Using Azure Kubernetes Service puts us into a position to not only deploy our business logic in Docker containers, including the orchestration, but also…to easily manage the exposure and control and meter the access."
Thomas Gossler, Lead Architect, Digital ecosystem platform

FUJIFILM cut latency by 95 per cent after implementing microservices with Azure Functions
"This was the first full-scale implementation of PaaS at FUJIFILM, but we were able to move development along smoothly and cost effectively, even when unexpected issues arose, by taking advantage of Azure capabilities."
Yuki Chiba, Design Leader of the Advanced Solutions Group, IMAGE WORKS Team

Quest cuts time-to-market by two thirds with their serverless platform
"Whenever a microservice calls into our serverless Azure platform framework, the Azure API Management gateway acts as a gatekeeper for authentication."
Curtis Johnstone, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft platform management business unit
Featured microservices resources
Related solutions
Bring together people, processes and products to continuously deliver value to customers and coworkers.
Build apps faster by not having to manage infrastructure.
Turn your ideas into applications faster using the right tools for the job.
Simplify and accelerate development and testing (dev/test) across any platform