What are the biggest challenges with monolithic architectures?

Monolithic architectures are software systems that are designed as a single, self-contained unit, with all of the system’s functionality tightly integrated into a single codebase. While monolithic architectures have some advantages, such as simplicity, ease of development, and no latency between their internal components, there are several challenges associated with this approach, including:

Scalability: Monolithic architectures can be difficult to scale horizontally because adding more resources to the system requires duplicating the entire system, which can be expensive and complex.

Flexibility: Monolithic architectures are often inflexible because all components are tightly coupled, making it difficult to modify or add new functionality without impacting other parts of the system.

Resilience: Monolithic architectures can be vulnerable to failures because a single bug or issue in any part of the code can bring down the entire system.

Maintainability: Monolithic architectures can be difficult to maintain because the codebase can become large and complex over time, making it hard to understand and modify.

Deployment: Deploying changes to a monolithic architecture can be challenging because updates to any part of the codebase require rebuilding, redeploying and testing the entire system.

To address these challenges, many organizations are moving towards microservices architectures, which break down large, monolithic systems into smaller, independently deployable services that communicate with each other over APIs.