History of Cloud Application Architectures From Deployment Monoliths via Microservices to Serverless Architectures and Possible Roads Ahead-A Review from the Frontline ( invited paper )

This paper presents a review of cloud application architectures and its evolution. It reports 1 observations being made during the course of a research project that tackled the problem to transfer 2 cloud applications between different cloud infrastructures. As a side effect we learned a lot about 3 commonalities and differences from plenty of different cloud applications which might be of value for 4 cloud software engineers and architects. Throughout the course of the research project we analyzed 5 industrial cloud standards, performed systematic mapping studies of cloud-native application related 6 research papers, performed action research activities in cloud engineering projects, modeled a cloud 7 application reference model, and performed software and domain specific language engineering 8 activities. Two major (and sometimes overlooked) trends can be identified. First, cloud computing 9 and its related application architecture evolution can be seen as a steady process to optimize 10 resource utilization in cloud computing. Second, this resource utilization improvements resulted 11 over time in an architectural evolution how cloud applications are being build and deployed. A shift 12 from monolithic servce-oriented architectures (SOA), via independently deployable microservices 13 towards so called serverless architectures is observable. Especially serverless architectures are more 14 decentralized and distributed, and make more intentional use of independently provided services. In 15 other words, a decentralizing trend in cloud application architectures is observable that emphasizes 16 decentralized architectures known from former peer-to-peer based approaches. That is astonishing 17 because with the rise of cloud computing (and its centralized service provisioning concept) the 18 research interest in peer-to-peer based approaches (and its decentralizing philosophy) decreased. 19 But this seems to change. Cloud computing could head into future of more decentralized and more 20 meshed services. 21

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