Winventory: microservices architecture case study

In the CERN laboratory, users have access to a large number of different licensed software assets. The landscape of such assets is very heterogeneous including Windows operating systems, office tools and specialized technical and engineering software. In order to improve management of the licensed software and to better understand the needs of the users, it was decided to develop a Winventory application. The Winventory is a tool that gathers and presents statistics of software assets on CERN Windows machines and facilitates interaction with their individual users. The system was built based on microservices architecture pattern, an increasingly popular approach to web application development. The microservices architecture pattern separates the application into multiple independently deployable units that can be individually developed, tested and deployed. This paper presents the microservices architecture and design choices made in order to achieve a modern, maintainable and extensible system for managing licensed software at CERN.