Adopting Microservices and DevOps in the Cyber-Physical Systems Domain: A Rapid Review and Case Study

TL;DR

This paper reviews how microservices and DevOps can be adopted in cyber-physical systems, highlighting domain-specific challenges, practices, and research opportunities through a literature review and industry case study.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of CPS-specific challenges and practices for microservices and DevOps, including insights from a case study at Siemens.

Findings

CPS has unique hardware-related challenges affecting software practices.

Many microservices and DevOps practices are shared with enterprise applications.

The study identifies research gaps and tailored methods for CPS adoption.

Abstract

The domain of cyber-physical systems (CPS) has recently seen strong growth, e.g., due to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial domains, commonly referred to as "Industry 4.0". However, CPS challenges like the strong hardware focus can impact modern software development practices, especially in the context of modernizing legacy systems. While microservices and DevOps have been widely studied for enterprise applications, there is insufficient coverage for the CPS domain. Our goal is therefore to analyze the peculiarities of such systems regarding challenges and practices for using and migrating towards microservices and DevOps. We conducted a rapid review based on 146 scientific papers, and subsequently validated our findings in an interview-based case study with 9 CPS professionals in different business units at Siemens AG. The combined results picture the specifics of microservices and DevOps in the CPS domain. While several differences were revealed that may require adapted methods, many challenges and practices are shared with typical enterprise applications. Our study supports CPS researchers and practitioners with a summary of challenges, practices to address them, and research opportunities.