Financial technologies are typically comprised of payments, insurance, deposit and lending, capitalisation, investment management, and market provisioning, and each one of these sub sectors has distinct attraction to present significant challenges (Chishti et al., 2016). This paper is divided into three sections: Firstly, the paper will start by addressing the issues in one of the financial subsector, the traditional payment clearance system of retail banking. Second, it examines several statutes applicable to smart contracts for payment clearing and critically analyses the advantages, disadvantages, risks, and technology’s disruptive impact involved. Finally, conclude the paper by providing predictions, implications, and recommendations of using smart contracts.

2.   Traditional payment clearance system and Smart Contracts

Retail banking is mainly accountable for keeping consumers money in a secure manner by maintaining multiple procedures and mediators, and that leads to cause the entire payments clearance system being quite slow and costlier. The inclusion of manual procedures and human intervention makes the banking sector susceptible to errors, risks, and fraudulence (Vega, 2021). The following issues in the traditional payment clearing system (in the context of backend process) are discussed in the paper and how smart contracts in blockchain based applications can be used to overcome it:

• Traditional payment clearance takes at least 1 to 3 days in verification between two parties due to the legal contract is engaged.
• The banking data stores in multiple locations and therefore, there can be chance to change the data at the same time.
• Cyber-attacks, data leakage and account hacks in the payment clearance system.

According to (Pedersen, 2020, p.160), the global financial crisis turned out between 2007-09 became the crucial turning point for fintech. Post-crisis, traditional financial intermediaries thoroughly examined payment systems to better control the risk. The emergence of alternative mechanisms, such as peer-to-peer, virtual banking, mobile banking, smart contracts, and open banking APIs all serve to offer additional alternatives to customers. Blockchain-based smart contracts have had a major impact on the financial industry in the last few years, resulting in a new crypto economy. Szabo (1994) described smart contracts as a set of promises that can be specified in a digital form and parties act on these promises. It uses computer protocols that facilitate, verify, and automatically enforce information transfer for the negotiation and agreement among multiple untrustworthy parties (Pedersen, 2020, p.118). This means that by using smart contracts, information can be more transparent, secure, and reliable between two parties. Blockchain-based applications such as Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, r3 Corda, Ripple have smart contracts which overlap traditional contracts by including the terms of agreements between two or more parties. These contracts have the ability to convert paper contracts into digital contracts and execute agreements automatically in a distributed environment based on conditions (Pedersen, 2020, p.160). In order to prevent contract tampering, smart contracts are copied to each node of the blockchain network. By enabling the execution of the operations by computers and services provided by blockchain platforms, human error could be reduced to avoid disputes regarding such contracts (Pedersen, 2020, p.118).

Using smart contracts in the Blockchain-based application can drastically reduce manual interventions by digitising procedures (Giancaspro, 2017). This implies retail banking can start using smart contracts as a possible replacement for traditional business contracts. It would help to improve the efficiency of payment clearance between two parties and reduce manual operational costs (Nzuva, 2019). Consumers and banks are the main trading parties in online payment transactions so smart contracts execute based on conditions to ensure that payments are made within a predetermined time. In the traditional payment system, the intermediary is responsible for ensuring the effective execution of contracts, and many scenarios are guarded by a certain degree of centralisation. Achieving true decentralisation is extremely challenging in real world applications. More centralised consortiums and private blockchains can be derived from a completely decentralised public blockchain (Shin el at., 2016).

3.   Business and Economic disruption that widespread adoption of smart contracts

Payments are tracked by a number of financial institutions using SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) and these transactions/payments between two parties are handled through the SWIFT system using a middleman (Chishti et al., 2016, p.206). The banks, however, will not be able to detect if the middleman engages in fraud. Smart contracts can eliminate the need for middlemen in the completion of transactions. The implementation of smart contracts using blockchain technology can eliminate legal personnel (Nzuva,2019) and validate the transactions by the consensus of the network’s users rather than by a trusted intermediary or Escrow services (Giancaspro, 2017). This means that it can reduce transactions costs, as well as provide transparency and confidentially to all parties involved. Smart contracts are based on cryptographic protocols, which allow the code to execute autonomously. The code can be written based on blockchain applications in the coding language like Solidity, Kotlin, Go, Java based on Ethereum, Hyperledger or Corda applications. Transparency and anonymity are two other benefits provided by smart contracts (Nzuva,2019, p.9). In a public ledger, smart contracts are visible to all miners, as there is no central authority or trusted intermediary validating and collating all transactions.

A smart contract is a program that can self-execute and enforce a transaction contract, verify it, or facilitate its performance using a blockchain environment, such as Corda, Ripple (Nzuva, 2019, p.2). In a blockchain-enabled environment, digitalisation and the exchange of financial assets present new ethical challenges. A smart contract can be triggered by events outside of the contract, such as by the Internet of Things (IoT) or Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are many areas where smart contracts can be useful, and studies have been conducted on the use of law, regulations, and private standards in enhancing the sustainability of value chains (Woiceshyn, 2011, p.5). Smart contracts can be sustained and trusted by means of implementation into blockchain based applications (Mengelkamp et al., 2017). This is because blockchains provide guarantees of authenticity of information and a mechanism to enforce representations through smart contracts, blockchains can improve sustainability.

Smart contracts need to be discussed in a wider context than their impact on commercial contracts (Woiceshyn, 2011, p.5). This means that smart contracts can be employed to automate processes to contribute to the area of social corporate responsibility (CSR). In general, social contracts are the foundation for an ideal society based on peer-to-peer relationships rather than government-to-government relationships. In addition, to automate socially accepted rules, smart contracts offer opportunities for new forms of governance through the implementation of new social contracts. This means that there are both challenges and opportunities associated with the digitalization of social contracts and norms. In the information age, updating social contracts is essential to protect human dignity and fulfil human potential (Woiceshyn, 2011). The smart contract cannot be changed or reversed since blockchain ensures that it will execute if the agreed conditions are met. Certain codes can be formulated based on conditions for the transfer of funds for social causes. Although the mind can change, the immutable agreement cannot (Woiceshyn, 2011, p.5). This law obliges businesses to adhere to their promises transparently and permanently. By describing the promise, it is committing to, a bank can set up a smart social contract (SSC). Customers can check on the ledger whether their payment or action has been received by the charity whenever they pay or complete an action. The blockchain based smart contracts have a disrupting applicability to the payment clearance systems by reducing the processing duration and eliminating the third parties for verification.

4.   Conclusion

A single transaction’s efficiency can be influenced by the level of centralization and the use of technology. Due to the simultaneous nature of transaction processing and clearing, each transaction must be verified by all nodes across the network, hindering the speed of the network. The major risk associated with smart contracts is incorrect structuring of the contract through incorrect coding and/or requirements. Cybersecurity protection is insufficient to prevent legislation from being hacked. Since smart contracts are immutable, it is extremely difficult to modify specific clauses. Due to this, the contracts are invulnerable to tampering and offer the best security possible. When a change is made in one system, it does not affect all the other devices in the system; nevertheless, the change will be applied to all connected devices. As a result, the contract is less flexible and difficult to change. Despite this, smart contracts remain widely used worldwide due to their protection function. On the other hand, the immunity to change acts as a barrier between the parties and difficult for the courts to fill the gaps. As smart contracts in Ethereum use “gas” to execute contracts, there is an unnecessary cost for inefficient use of these contracts. This means that by eliminating text-based contractual relationships, smart contracts introduce an additional risk. This increase the likelihood that the contract can be hacked or that the code contains an unintended programming error (Giancaspro, 2017, p.3).

Implications

As a result of weak legal regulations, smart contracts are highly dependent on programmers and are susceptible to bugs and vulnerabilities. Imagine that X and Y are negotiating smart contracts, and Z is adding a step to the chain. As a result, Z must accept the terms and conditions set by X and Y, and not having the option to negotiate their terms and conditions. This violates the most fundamental element of the contract, requiring him to accept all of the conditions, even those Z does not want to accept. A few security vulnerabilities have plagued smart contracts in recent years, resulting in both theft and financial losses. Formal analysis and verification of smart contracts before they were deployed on the blockchain could have prevented such vulnerabilities (Nzuva,2019, p.3). As an emerging technology, smart contracts currently face many challenges, such as legal, reliance on “off-chain” resources, immutability, scalability, and consensus mechanism issues because of country’s jurisdiction and formalities involved between two parties in the establishment of legal relations.

Predictions

Although blockchains have a technological advantage over banks and credit intermediaries, it is still too early to predict a complete disruption of the financial system with this technology. Therefore, a multi-centre weakly intermediated scenario is likely to be conceivable (Chang et al, 2016). In this case, banks use blockchain technology to improve their payment clearing systems and overcome certain obstacles in information communication and forming consortiums to consolidate their positions. This suggests that simultaneous clearing and transaction would also eliminate the need to reconcile in the future and makes banks more efficient in general. On the other hand, the decrease in the efficiency of each transaction would increase transaction security (Panisi, 2017, p.22). This is because that each new financial innovation has always been accompanied by an outbreak of debate concerning regulation, efficiency, and security. As a result, current obstacles may appear in the way of history, blockchain technology will eventually overcome its technical, regulatory, and other issues. Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, NEM, Stellar, and Waves are just some of the blockchain platforms available for deploying smart contacts with unique application features. It is therefore possible that smart contracts may be integrated into the banking industry in the near future.

Recommendations

Smart contracts can only be widely adopted if parties use a trusted technical expert to either record their agreement in code or verify that code written by a third party is correct. The analogy to hiring a lawyer to explain “legalese” is misplaced since there is no “legalese” in a traditional text-based contract. A non-lawyer can usually understand several provisions of a short form agreement as well as part of a long, complex agreement, especially those that outline business terms. Non-programmers, however, could not even begin to understand even a very basic smart contract. A chainlink oracle allows smart contracts running on any blockchain to communicate with any API (Application Programming Interface). In this case, they are significantly more dependent on an expert to explain the contract’s legal implications. In spite of the fact that this technology cannot completely eliminate intermediaries, it has already been proved that it will significantly simplify the economic turnover, and thus make modern business models more efficient, while at the same time reducing transaction costs.

There are several instruments available for measuring the knowledge skill of employees, as skills is an important asset for the organisation, and this is the reason why most of the organisation is now focusing on the employees learning and development needs, that can produce commercial benefits by improving performance, enhance employee’s engagement and develop human capital. The strategic plan of learning and development is critical nowadays to meet the current and future corporate objectives (Wolff, 2007b; Gibb, 2008). Learning and Development can be a prime opportunity to expand the knowledge base of all employees in the organisation. Employee learning and development is often treated as a corporate luxury and can be one of the first budget items to be taken out in a recession. The training plan is set by the management based on Organisation’s goals, and to compete with its global competitor. Instead of resources restrict their job profile, organisation needs to think out of the box, to be skilled and develop continuously. Performance management can be effective when employees have the freedom to act and work (Egan,1995). The whole process of performance appraisal and performance as a whole should be team or individual-centric and not boss-centric. Line manager or goal setter appraiser should be involved in coaching, counseling giving feedback from time to time to encourage good performance and growth.

The essay is more focused on the performance management and learning & development processes of the company HCL. HCL Great Britain Limited, founded in 1976, is an $8.6 billion IT Company listed in India. HCL’s range of offerings includes product engineering, software applications, Business processing outsourcing Services, Infrastructure and Cloud services, Data Analytics, IoT, IT hardware. The HCL team consists of over 1.4 million professionals globally across 48 countries.

Employees are the strength of the organisation and thus HCL is more focused on Human Capital as a Strength. The resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991) has prompted attempts to create the resource-based model of Strategic HRM. Furthermore, Barney states that for a resource to result in sustained competitive advantage it must meet fundamental criteria, and (Wright et al.,1994) demonstrate how human resources meet these criteria in an Organisation. The first key criteria in an Organisation is that resources must be valuable and empowered to perform the work. HCL management encourages employees to take full ownership of the work assigned so that, the place where frontline employees interact with customers can create real value for them. However, the downside is that appointed employees are overburdened with the responsibilities and thus face stress. The second criterion assumes that the most important competence for employees is reasoning ability due to future needs for adaptability and flexibility, and HCL competes it by focusing on learning and development processes in the organisation. On the contrary, some training proves to be worthless as they commonly value in practical use hence it is waste of time and money. The third criteria are, resources need to be inimitable. This quality applies to human resources as competitors will find it difficult to identify the exact source of competitive advantage within the firm’s HR Pool. HCL Technologies embarked on the “Employees First, Customer Second” journey in 2005 when the shifts in the IT services market had left the company struggling to compete with its global competitors. After a series of successful experiments that turned the management structure upside down and transformed the company, HCL is now one of the fastest-growing IT service partners in the world.

The main issues addressed in this paper are the Implications of the rating system on Employees’ motivation and the dilemma of managers while rating team members and identifying the training plan based on the rating provided to resources. The first half of this essay covers performance management, performance appraisal system, and how it works in HCL. HCL’s appraisal rating is done on a scale of 1 to 5: outstanding to under-performer and once a rating is done, the scores are converted into a forced distribution. In contrast to defects of the forced distribution system, Armstrong and Baron (2004) supported this distribution by saying this brings consistency in the system though, both managers and staff dislike this system.

The second half of this essay covers the learning and development issues observed in the organisation to deliver full potential toward training and how it is important to move from the traditional way of learning in which organisation used to employ dedicated people to work efficiently to Strategic L& D with emphasis to meet Organisation objectives (Gold et al 2013b; Colin 2010).  Moreover, the essay focuses on how the training plan for both Outstanding and under-performers should be planned, and what all learning mechanisms can be used for both outstanding performers and under-performers, and how this can be applied.

Case Study 1 – Beyond the hard work, Resource Performance Management

Performance Management system involves a series of interrelated activities. All the activities are designed by keeping organisation strategic goal in mind. Performance appraisal is one of the tools of the performance management system (De Nisi, 2000) and it is a systemic cycle whereby the appraiser assigns a grader score to the appraisee to indicate the performance. Furthermore, Fletcher (2001:473) explained appraisal as activities an organisation conducts, to assess employees evaluate their competencies speed up the performance, and offer rewards.

There are various approaches to performance appraisal mainly: Free Test, Critical Incident Technique, Checklist approach, Goal Setting and 360-degree feedback. Among these approaches, this piece of work would mainly focus on Goal Setting as HCL follows Goal setting.

Numerous theories have been developed with regard to performance management. Goal theory proposed by Latham and Locke (2007) focused on setting goals or objectives to be achieved in alignment with organisation’s goal. This theory is further supported by the idea of Strebler et al. (2001) which is to make goals or objectives work effectively, the objective should be cleared to both goal setter and appraisee, it should be easy to understand, should be a part of organisations strategic goal. HCL follows the goal theory of the performance.

During the performance measurement of the employees, each resource in HCL highlights their specific activities, measurable attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) objectives, and agreed by the line manager. These parameters are also called KPI (key performance indicator) for the team members, these KPIs are evaluated twice a year. The team performs self-assessment with the justification of work done throughout the period, and then the line manager provides the rating between 1 to 5, where rating-1 represents Outstanding performers, once a rating is done, the scores are converted into a forced distribution.  Line Manager & HR are bound with the management policy to maintain the bell curve diagram. According to the organisation policy, only a fixed number of team members can be rated R1(Outstanding) in this scenario appraiser finds himself/herself in a dilemma. The positive side of this ranking is, it helps in increasing productivity and motivation of the top-level employees and as (Pfeffer and Sutton, 2006) supported that the best performance comes in organisation when few are treated as a top. However, the downside is also discussed by Latham et al. (2007) that it is tough to motivate those labeled as a bottom, damages team spirit and leads to a competitive environment rather than co-operative.

A further benefit of forced ranking is that it controls the annual budget of the organisation which is not possible while using absolute performance. On the contrary linking pay with appraisal (Roy, 1952) and (Bowery and Thorpe, 1986) supported that linking monetary rewards with performance measures can actually hold down performance.  The resources hesitate to discuss the performance problems, and which resulted to overlook the development needs of the employees. A similar survey was performed by IRS (Attwood, 2005, p.30) and noticed 30% of pay awards are linked with performance either wholly or partly, however another similar survey was performed by (Houldsworth, 2007) and found the percentage to 69.

The CIPD survey in 2005 indicated that only 8 percent of organisations used forced ranking with rating systems, but another survey performed in a year (Houldsworth, 2007) and found that 45 percent of organisations applied the ranking system during the appraisal. Researchers attempted to evaluate the impact of performance management on the overall performance of an organisation. Latham and Locke (1979) proved that organizations that had set specific production goals achieved the highest results.

In contrast to this Institute of personnel managers in 1992 performed research and according to the formal performance management programmers were not associated with the performance of the firm. This can be seen in the case of Accenture, Deloitte, Adobe, Google, and Netflix are some of the well-known organisation which has scrapped the performance rating system several years ago and believe in timely feedback from the managers on a regular ongoing basis.

Ethical dilemma for line managers comes into the picture here, wherein a team of 20 members, as per line manager 5 of the team members are a perfect match for grade 1, however, the manager has the pressure to select just 2 as per management to align with the Bell curve. However, during the project delivery, the project manager has separate KPIs to maximize the potential of each team member and all team members equally contribute to the success of the project. But not all team members get the same rating and during the appraisal, the line manager has to follow the bell curve diagram. This implies even though all the team members have equally contributed to the delivery of the project, line managers are forced by management to provide an un-equal rating to them during the appraisal.  This can lead talented employees to be demotivated and leave the organisation.

This has been noticed that employees have different expectations towards their career goals from those of two decades ago. While performing the SWOT analysis of the current appraisal system in the HCL, it has been noticed that Continuous discussion between line managers and employees during the appraisal can be considered as a strength however this happens only once or twice a year. There should be regular formal and informal discussions throughout the year. Regular formal/informal feedback discussion in regular intervals can help line managers to measure the performance and output of the employee and on the other side, it also helps employees to know early feedback to act on improvement. The line managers can follow the situational leadership style based on employee performance toward the goal.

A non-positive value on any of the factors like motivation, career direction, intensity and duration of willingness to furnish task efforts, role knowledge, and skills, technologies, support from supervisors and peers can result in a negative performance outcome. The line manager should thoroughly discuss each resource and understand the area of interest. Based on the discussion, next year’s goal is to be set and moreover, included in the training plan. The formal review meeting process should be distributed more evenly throughout. Performance management systems can play an important role in the growth of organisation, if it considers as part of mainstream business issues and not just HR challenges (McDonald and Smith, 1991).

This essay has discussed the appraisal system in HCL and its implications. The second aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the rating system on learning and development in HCL. In today’s competitive environment the focus should be on management growth, leadership and succession planning. The concept of continuous improvement given by Kaizen should be employed at each level from top management to threshold level workers. According to Laurie et al. success of a manager lies in understanding the needs and expectations of team members, their ability to work with other people. Managers are evaluated not just on their own performance but also on results achieved by other staff.

Case Study 2 –How can Resource Performance relates to Training Planning

Learning and development is a division of HR that involves improving performance at both group and individual levels by upgrading skills and knowledge. One of its vital responsibility is to manage people’s development. As per CIDP, L&D focuses on creating the culture of on-going learning and growth to achieve organisation goal. Technology is moving forward very rapidly, and to sustain in the market keeping the organisation up to date with the latest technology, is the only way to keep ahead (Beardwell et al., 2014), especially for IT-oriented companies as HCL. As presented in case 1 about the performance management system in HCL, this part of the essay will highlight post-performance L&D measures taken in HCL.

Performance management review gives an idea of the gap that exists in between what is expected and what is achieved, this gap then leads to learning and development programs. Argyris (1992) explained that organisational learning can occur when an organisation achieves what is intended and corrective action has been taken on the mismatch between intentions and outcomes.

HCL follows the practical and professional level of the training plan as defined by Beardwell (2017, p.231). The practical level of training includes e-learning, coaching and mentoring. Coaching is an informal way of developing individuals most commonly immediate managers play the role of coaches and it can be effective when the proper support, clear goals, regular direction from coaches to the team, and timely evaluation are taken measured. CIDP (2012a) discovered that coaching has been used by 43 percent of organisation to improve poor performance, and 47 percentage used it to enhance good performance.

In addition to practical learning, professional learning involves a pre-defined set of courses with internal certifications based on organisation strategic goals. These courses are assigned to each employee based on designation regardless of the employee’s current area of works, and employees are forced to complete those courses. The positive aspect of this learning is the company provides equal learning opportunities to all employees irrespective of their posts, the downside is these courses may or may not be practically used by some of the members due to different job profiles or not an area of interest and, for them its utter waste of time.

In contrast to the internal training explained above, HCL also focuses on external training programs based on project needs, however, the project manager has an option to pick and choose trainees for such straining. The line manager gives priority to the highly performed employees reflected on the Bell curve.  A survey of employers in 2015 found that 54% adopted a whole workforce approach to talent management whereas 35 percentage focused only on high potential staff (CIDP, 2015b:20). In support to the above (Dreyfus et al.,1986) introduced the five-stage model to explain the acquisition of skills to the resources based on effective performance from lower to higher-order skills. On the other hand, the disadvantage of providing training to talented resources, Powell and Lubitsh (2007) proposed that handling talented people can sometimes be challenging for managers because they very well know their worth to organisation, hence may resist being controlled and may often fail to respond to traditional approaches. In support of the above Goffee and Jones (2009) also agreed on the fact that though outstanding people add value to the organisation and require extra care in terms of pay and incentives and are toughest to manage in order to make them sustain in the organisation. In addition to the above argument as per the 70/20/10 model, only 10 percent of learning takes place through formal training programs hence rather than providing training to high-performing individuals more focus should be given to workplace-based learning to all the team members.

Moreover, HCL follows the apprenticeship levy program defined by the UK government. This level of the programme helps to fill the intermediate skills gap of the young generation as well as under-performers to skilled up in HCL. Ryan et al. (2006) point out that organisations make their own decision regarding apprenticeship training as needed. where their needs align with government, formal apprenticeship training is provided. On the other hand, where their interests are not met alternative steps are taken without government funding.

This essay, it has been focused on the importance of having a systematic and well-organised structure for managing learning and development. Regardless of models and approaches used by HCL, it should be covered under the learning needs of the employees toward organisation goals and should be designed and plan accordingly to the project delivery, and requirement and well evaluated by the HR and line manager (Marchington et al., 2016). The training plan should also focus on under-performers along with outstanding-performers. There is also some evidence that combining performance feedback and reward discussions may serve to reinforce the developmental messages, at least where low performers are involved (Prince & Lawler 1986). According to Laurie et al, the quality of management of how they are taking care of resources and applying the processes and commitment of the resource are central to the success of the organisation.

Line Manager and HR practitioners need to be able to choose the approach that is most appropriate for specific circumstances. Coaching, e-learning, continuous professional development continues to attract attention and action is being taken to ensure better efficacy. Apprenticeships and management development are currently high profile with the latter having become increasable international and global in nature. Overall, this study strengthens the idea that people learn best when they are motivated to do it and performance appraisal plays an important factor in motivation.

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Microservices Architecture

Microservices architecture involves breaking down a software application into its smaller components, rather than just having one large software application. Typically, this involves splitting up a software application into smaller, distinct business capabilities. These can then talk to each other via an interface.

Let’s take a basic example, for instance, your business is a small retailer. Instead of going and looking at your shelves all the time to see when you need to reorder stock, you want to automate it, see what’s been sold and order when stocks are low. You want to be able to effectively manage and update your product catalog rather than just knowing off the top of your head. A software product can do all these things at once – however, breaking it into these three main capabilities (catalog management, inventory management, and order management) means separation of both logic and services, and makes more sense.

You can do this just in a regular monolithic software – do separation of components – however, a microservice architecture takes it further. Each service component is a piece of software within itself. The inputs and outputs that can flow from the other services are only defined by an API (Application Programming Interface), which ensures security and atomicity of each component, while still being able to talk to its neighbor software components, making it far easier for testing and reuse if necessary.

Web Services

So, if microservices are like mini-applications that can talk to each other, then what are web services? Well, they are also mini-applications that can talk to each other, but over a network, in a defined format. They allow one piece of software to get input from another piece of software, or provide output, over a network. This is performed via a defined interface and language, such as XML.

If you’re running on a network where your software components or services won’t be co-located, or you want the option of running them in separate locations in the future (e.g. cloud to cloud, server to premises, client to server, server to server) then you will likely need to use web services in some form.

What’s Best for My Project?

For anything beyond a singular-function software, it’s advisable to choose a microservices architecture: developers can work on distinct parts, it’s easier to test, and it generally takes less time to “put together.” Single teams can work on single distinct business components.

If your software needs to speak to other software over a network, or you’d like the software itself to “live” in separate places, then you’ll likely need to use web services to do so.

So, yes, your software can use both microservices and web services at the same time — in fact, it probably will.

The right architecture for your project, of course, depends on the requirements themselves. For a small program that exists solely on your phone or laptop and doesn’t require a network connection for any reason, then you might not use a microservices architecture, or any web services to get the job done. In this case, the development is probably pretty straightforward and the software won’t take too much time to develop (unless the operations are complex or compute-heavy, there’s in-depth graphics, etc.).

As the saying goes, there are many different ways to skin a cat, and so too is the case with software development — there’s no “right” way to do something. You could develop a huge, complex, network-heavy program without using microservices or web services, but it might be a big mess that takes forever to develop (and never makes it out of the testing phase).

Choosing the right design architecture for your software, in the beginning, is critical to seeing it be developed along a healthy time frame, ensuring it’s well-tested, and that it’s robust enough to ensure a change doesn’t break the whole thing.

Some of the features common among the three platforms include instant provisioning, self-service, autoscaling, identity management, security and compliance, among others.

At present, AWS can be considered to be much bigger than both Azure and GCP in terms of functionality and maturity.

However, the other two are also progressing at a faster rate to prove their market dominance.

AWS Vs Azure Vs Google Cloud: Pricing

While choosing a public cloud service provider, the price aspect is considered to be the prime impetus that influences the decision making of IT firms.

The following comparison among AWS, Azure and GCP in terms of price and machine type will assist you in your decision making:

Apart from the aforementioned pricing models, there is another model that is worth mentioning!!

AWS and Azure are offering their cloud services with pay-per-minute billing options, whereas GCP is ahead of them by providing a pay-per-second billing option. Moreover, GCP is offering various discounts and flexible contracts to gain maximum demand influx.