The most successful holistic systems started as well-structured monoliths, partitioned into smaller segments for either operation (e.g. frequent deployments of UI) or technology (e.g. introduction of new language runtime into an existing application) aspects. It came as an evolutionary step through an introduction of distributed patterns, rather than a complete redesign of the system.

But there is no such thing as a free lunch. With all benefits that composable architectures provide, they could introduce complexities common for distributed systems if not well thought through. Taking a holistic design approach to designing an architecture from scratch is more important than ever. Amazon is amongst the first to recognise this and introduced the AWS Well-Architected framework to guide developers when building cloud native applications.

We see how innovative banking and lending propositions are being launched in the cloud in a matter of months. This allows banks to take off-the-shelf best-of-services components provided by innovative fintechs and mix it with in-house differentiators such as user experience, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.