Discover how a well-planned software architecture impacts your product and explore the options available in today’s market.

What is software architecture?

Software architecture is the heart of any product system that your company uses. It can be CRM systems, management programs, mobile apps, and so on. Your software will be a lot easier to develop, test, and maintain if it has a clear structure. In simple terms, it’s like a map or a blueprint that shows what parts it consists of and how these parts interact with each other. You see all the parts of it as a big picture that helps you add some changes, plan scaling, or whatever your business needs right now. 

A software system’s structure typically covers:

• the system’s core elements;
• The elements’ interfaces;
• how these elements behave when interacting.
  

Why does your business need a good software architecture? Having so helps you keep the system stable, easy to understand for developers, and intuitive for users. And the best part of it – you can reuse components and templates in other projects, saving time and money.

Why is it important for your business?

Because understanding your software architecture lets you see how the internal systems your business relies on actually work, and where they can be improved. It makes it easier to implement changes, scale your product, and avoid potential issues. You don’t only see the visual software part, you can plan further updates based on the inner system structure you know. 

From a business perspective, a clear and well-planned architecture brings tangible benefits. It:

• aligns with user needs and business goals,
• ensures data security,
• simplifies system maintenance and updates,
• reduces development time and costs.
  

A thoughtfully designed architecture also allows your business to adapt quickly to market shifts and technological changes. Knowing how fast everything can change, in terms of tech innovations, software architecture can be a solid base for further updates. And it is. 

How do business goals influence the choice of architecture?

In a nutshell, software architecture = your business goals. Architecture acts as a bridge between a company’s strategy and its technical solutions. Let’s look at some examples.

For example, if you want to expand into new markets quickly, your architecture must be flexible and scalable. Or one more case, where your focus is more on cutting costs. Here, the architecture must be simpler, with fewer features and lower support needs. If you focus on speed and scalability or stability and maintenance, you can choose between two architectural options – monolithic vs microservice architecture. The key thought – you should adapt software architecture to key business goals in a smart way. 

Whatever software architecture you choose – always start by defining the goals your business strives to achieve. Aligning these factors carefully increases the chances of achieving the desired results.

What are the main types of software architecture models? 

There are main software architecture types: 

• Monolithic architecture,
• Microservice architecture,
• Layered (n-tier) architecture,
• Model-View-Controller (MVC),
• Service-oriented architecture (SOA).

The specificity of each architecture above can set a direction for choosing the software your business needs. To choose the best-fitted model, assess your business needs first. Then, evaluate the project scope and extra requirements, if there are any. This way, you’ll simplify your choice and make your software a reliable business tool. Here are more details on all of the software architecture models. 

What business benefits does each type of software architecture provide?

They all help businesses more deeply understand what their software consists of and bring value in accordance with their business goals. Move on to the details.

Monolithic architecture

It launches faster, has less complex testing and debugging, and lower infrastructure costs at the start. It combines everything that is important in the early stages of business and for small projects.

Microservice architecture

It lets you scale services separately and implement new features faster. This reduces the time and cost of updates, as all new implementations occur in each block independently of each other. This model also lets you use different technologies for different parts of the system, and facilitates maintenance and updates.

Layered (n-tier) architecture

Dividing the system into layers simplifies testing, eases integration, and keeps code organized. This architecture is more for businesses needing frequent updates, letting them change parts without rebuilding everything.

Model-View-Controller (MVC) 

Speeds up product development by keeping logic, interface, and management distinct. With this modular architecture, teams can work on system parts in parallel. As an overall income, it speeds up the release of new features to the market.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

This model lets you reuse ready-made business services, respond faster to changes, and bring products to market faster. In other words, it makes work more organized and controllable across the entire IT infrastructure.

How to choose a cost-effective software architecture model?

Choose the software architecture model that perfectly aligns with your business goals and system needs. Don’t look at one that’s unnecessarily complex or just trendy. If the architecture meets your specific needs and allows you to develop your product effectively, it will be both economical and practical.

But in addition to this, pay attention to the following equally important aspects:

• Defining system requirements. At the first stage, you need to clearly understand both functional and non-functional requirements. They also should reflect your prime business goals. Key considerations include performance, scalability, security, and reliability.
• Estimating development and support costs. Different architectures vary in complexity, affecting development and maintenance. Evaluate the complexity of each option in relation to your business goals, and factor in future update costs.
• Choosing between monolithic and microservice architecture. Monolithic architecture can be more cost-effective early on. It’s because it’s a single system that doesn’t require a lot of development effort. However, if you have high scalability and flexibility needs, it may become expensive over time. Because every update affects the entire system. So, the cost-effective approach becomes cashy. In such cases, microservices are usually a better fit, despite higher management costs.
• Leveraging existing solutions and technologies. Using platforms and technologies already in place within your organization can reduce integration costs and speed up development.
• Cost forecasting and budgeting. Build a cost model covering the entire system lifecycle to plan your budget effectively and avoid unexpected expenses.

How does scalability affect the choice of architecture?

All architectural models cope in absolutely different ways with increasing loads and system requirements. Therefore, this factor should be considered one of the first when reviewing different options. If you plan to scale your software over time, the chosen architecture should be able to expand databases, adapt to system traffic growth, and handle other important factors.

We can compare here two most chosen architectural models – monolithics and microservice architecture. Monolithic architecture may be less flexible when scaling because all components are closely interrelated. In contrast, microservice architecture allows individual services to be scaled independently of each other. This architecture allows you to achieve greater flexibility while making efficient use of resources.

In other words, the architecture you choose depends on the scalability requirements of your system you define beforehand.

Security and reliability when choosing a software architecture

Security and reliability determine a few key things: 

• how resilient the system is to attacks, 
• how well it recovers from failures, 
• how well it ensures continuous operation. 

Your architectural choices can either boost or compromise the system’s security and reliability. It all depends on its complexity and built-in features that can ensure security for your system in the future. 

Step one – consider Secure by Design principles. It involves integrating security at all stages of development. To do so, it uses proven methods like multi-layered protection and zero-trust architecture to keep data secure and prevent unauthorized access.

A system’s reliability also depends on how well it can recover from failures. Like, how fast can you use it after failure occurs or some security updates are made. So, step two – choose techniques that can greatly boost availability and resilience. Like geographic and hardware redundancy.

What do you need to think about to make a final decision on the choice?

Making the final decision is a complex task. To do this, you need to consider several key aspects that will help you сhoose the right business tool. 

Like these ones.

• The architecture must align with your business’s strategic goals and the specific project requirements. 
• The chosen architecture will have to be able to handle future load and scaling requirements to ensure performance and scalability.
• Consider system security and reliability requirements, including data protection and fault tolerance.
• Estimate the development cost, implementation, and maintenance of the system. This way, you can see if the chosen architecture fits the project’s budget and the deadlines you have. 
• The architecture should be flexible and adaptable to changes throughout the whole system’s lifecycle.

What do TRIARE experts say about choosing a software architecture?

At TRIARE, we adhere to generally accepted practices and approaches to choosing software architecture that are widely used in various industries. The main thing is to focus on key business factors. Don’t start by looking at what the architecture offers; start with your requirements and business goals, and then see how the architecture can meet them. Add to this your budget expectations and the time needed for development. 

As an extra point, evaluate the additional capabilities that are fundamental to any product entering the market. These are scalability, security, and reliability. Understanding software architecture patterns will give you a complete view of the system and help set the development start date.

Conclusion

As we highlighted, choosing software architecture is a complex process that must be done. Always put your business goals in first place and add new points around them. This way, your choice will reflect your vision and meet your final expectations. And on top of that, creates a product that perfectly performs its tasks and brings value to people who use it.  

If you are still choosing the architecture that will fit your product more – we can speed up this process. TRIARE experts will offer up-to-date options and guide you through the first steps toward building a top-notch product.