💃 The Evolution of Salesforce Architecture 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! With Dreamforce starting today I figured it was a good time to look back on the mothership’s journey. 🚵 

And what a journey it’s been.

Once upon a time (circa early 2000s), Salesforce was like that dependable, single-siloed toolbox every team loved. 🧰 

Over the years, though, as demands grew, Salesforce evolved from a monolithic application into a more dynamic, component-based system that now easily plays with microservices like a seasoned chess grandmaster. ♟️ 

Let’s go on a little time-traveling adventure and explore how Salesforce went from its humble monolithic beginnings to today’s scalable, microservice-friendly architecture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Evolution of Salesforce Architecture

• The Monolithic Era

• The API Age

• The Microservice Makeover

• The Future

WE ALL START SOMEWHERE

The Monolithic Era

Remember when Salesforce started as a simple CRM in the cloud?

Back then, Salesforce was a beautifully simple monolithic architecture, where everything lived happily under one roof. 🏠️ 

But while monoliths have their charm (simple deployments, single codebase), they also have limitations.

All the processes were tightly coupled: business logic, workflows, data models - everything. 🔗 

As organizations scaled, the need for flexibility and speed became evident.

What happened if you needed more scalability?

You either needed a bigger server or were stuck in a giant traffic jam of API calls, waiting for the monolith to handle everything like a bouncer at an overcrowded club. 😡 

Soon a better way emerged …

SERVICES ENTER THE RING

The API Age

With the rise of integrations and customization, Salesforce was forced to adopt a more modular approach. 📦️ 

Lightning was a huge step in this evolution, allowing for component-based architectures and the decoupling of the user interface from backend logic.

But the real star of the show? 🤩 

Salesforce APIs.

These allowed Salesforce to finally “play well with others,” so it could send and receive data from external systems without everything being bolted together.

SOAP was there from the early days, soon behind came REST, GraphQL, and other more efficient ways to connect the dots.

Yet evolution never stops …

A NEW SQUAD

The Microservice Makeover

Microservices turned the spotlight on by decoupling business functions into individual, independently deployable services. 🔥 

In the modern Salesforce architecture, you’ll find microservices forming the core of large-scale integrations and expansions.

For example, when a company has its own custom-built applications, they no longer need to try to fit everything into Salesforce. ⛔️ 

Instead, they build external microservices to handle specific tasks and then connect those services with Salesforce using APIs, Platform Events, and MuleSoft.

Think of microservices as Salesforce's new squad of superheroes, each with a specific power (or responsibility) to execute. 🦸 

These tiny services can scale independently, so when your reporting engine is experiencing a surge, your billing service isn’t dragged down with it.

This comes with lots of benefits .. not limited to:

📈 Scalability

🤸 Flexibility

❌ Fault Isolation

If you're thinking, “This sounds cool, but how do I actually use microservices with Salesforce?” here’s some ideas:

✅ API-Led Connectivity - Use RESTful services, GraphQL, or MuleSoft to create a network of microservices that can seamlessly interact with your Salesforce org.

✅ Platform Events - You can think of these as the text messages Salesforce sends out to let microservices know, "Hey, something happened. Do your thing!"

✅ Change Data Capture (CDC) - This allows external systems (like your microservices) to get a push notification whenever records are changed in Salesforce, triggering real-time data sync.

✅ Heroku - A PaaS that sits right next to Salesforce in the Salesforce ecosystem. It’s the go-to choice when you want to offload certain microservice-heavy tasks.

✅ MuleSoft - For large-scale enterprise-level integrations, MuleSoft is your best friend. Think of it as the bridge between Salesforce and the microservices you run on your own infrastructure.

WHERE WE’RE GOING WE WON’T NEED ROADS

The Future

Salesforce’s architecture continues to evolve. ♾️ 

We’re seeing more emphasis on event-driven architectures, serverless components, and AI-powered features that’ll further decouple and streamline how Salesforce operates in larger ecosystems.

Whether it's Einstein churning out predictive insights or your microservice pulling data from an IoT device, Salesforce is primed for a future filled with even more integration, automation, and flexibility. 💯 

In the end, Salesforce’s evolution from monolithic to microservices isn’t just about technical buzzwords - it’s about unlocking new possibilities for scale, performance, and innovation.

So, the next time you’re planning a Salesforce project, think modular, think scalable, and most importantly, think microservices. 👍️ 

Happy coding!

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Salesforce Memes