Martin Fowler explains the following:
The term microservice was discussed at a workshop of software architects near Venice in May 2011 to describe what the participants saw as a common architectural style that many of them had been recently exploring. In May 2012, the same group decided on µServices as the most appropriate name.
Let's get some background on the way microservices have evolved over the years. Enterprise architecture evolved from historic mainframe computing, through client-server architecture (two-tier to n-tier), to SOA.
The transformation from SOA to microservices is not a standard defined by an industry organization, but a practical approach practiced by many organizations. SOA eventually evolved to become microservices.
Adrian Cockcroft, a former Netflix architect, describes a microservice-based architecture as follows:
Fine grain...