Choreographer vs Orchestrator: Which is the best strategy for your company’s digital transactions?

The TrustCloud Choreographer is based on a way of understanding technology that adapts resources to the needs of businesses, always looking to build strategies that align with people’s daily lives.

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hen applied to digital transactions (video identification, payments, electronic signatures, etc.), choreography uses the latest advances to distribute and coordinate all the elements that influence a workflow in a flexible and highly secure environment. 

The success of initiatives such as the TrustCloud Choreographer will only be understood in the context of evolving business and brand needs, as well as user demands in the digital world. This evolution has given rise to microservices architecture, which has established itself as the most suitable method to cover all needs. Contact our specialists and discover how our Choreographer can help you optimize your company’s resources. 

Managing and coordinating microservices 

The transition from monolithic technological structures to microservices architecture involved defining technical and organizational demands. 

Monolithic technology was a very common approach to software design in the early days of computing, when systems were simpler, and applications didn’t require the complexity we see today. 

Monoliths are designed as a single code unit. In this view, all application functionality, from the user interface to business logic and data management, is integrated into a single set. All parts of the application are interconnected and depend on each other. Resources share the same memory space. If an update or modification is required in one part of the system, it can affect other areas of the application. The system’s scalability and flexibility could be compromised, as everything is tightly coupled. 

Although monoliths are easier to implement in the early stages of development, they can become more challenging to maintain as the application grows and evolves. 

As computer systems became more complex and demanding in terms of maintenance or updating, alternative approaches began to be explored. 

Microservices introduced a more modular and distributed way of designing applications. This choice not only involved a transformation in infrastructure, but also in how development teams conceptualized, deployed, and maintained systems. 

In a microservices architecture, the primary idea is to break down an application into small, independent services that handle specific functions. Each of these microservices operates autonomously (in both development, deployment, and scaling) and communicates with others through defined interfaces, such as APIs. This allows for scalability and flexibility. 

However, there may be centralized components in the system. For example, in service orchestration, where a coordinator (the orchestrator) manages the interaction and coordination between different microservices. 

In this context, there’s an approach that goes beyond orchestration and exploits the options provided by decentralization: choreography. 

Choreography vs Orchestration  

Let’s take a closer look at what these two management methods mean. 

• Choreographer 

In a choreographed system, each component is autonomous and makes decisions based on its state and the events it receives from other components or collects from a predetermined location. The different elements collaborate and communicate with each other to achieve common goals, but they maintain their independence, meaning they don’t need to wait for responses to continue working. This is known as asynchronous communication. The choreographer’s role is not to “direct” or “control” every movement, but to coordinate the interaction and flow of information between different components or services. 

TrustCloud has become the world’s first choreographer of digital transactions, designing a customized, flexible, and fortified structure for each client where privacy and global regulatory compliance are at the core. Request information here regarding the possibilities of the TrustCloud Choreographer to design the best digital transaction strategy. 

Additionally, by facilitating interoperability between different services and platforms, the dependence on the provider is eliminated, a phenomenon known as Vendor Lock-in. The choreographer’s ability to combine and manage services according to the unique needs of each transaction means that an organization is free to choose the best options for each specific task, regardless of the source. This freedom enhances competitiveness, fosters innovation by allowing companies to adopt new technologies from any source without major modification, and, of course, reduces cost. 

Let’s look at a contract signing process. When a customer makes a request for a contract, the entry service receives the request and proceeds with the creation of the document. At the same time, the electronic signature service is notified and waits for the contract to be ready. Once generated, this service passes the contract to the electronic signature service. The latter validates and signs the contract, and then sends it to the client through the document delivery service. In this scenario, each service communicates directly with others, making autonomous decisions based on specific events. There’s no central component directing the flow of the process. 

The choreographer allows the combination of different e-signature providers, or the addition of a provider at any point in the process, or the ability to switch from one to another in a very agile way. 

• Orchestrator 

The orchestrator’s function is to coordinate the deployment, execution, and interaction of different services or components of a technological system. This often involves managing scalability, resource management, and coordinating the sequence of tasks. 

Unlike the Choreographer, an Orchestrator centralizes the coordination and control of services. It is responsible for ensuring that services run efficiently and with the expected performance. 

In orchestration, a pattern of sending and receiving events is repeated. In this pattern, when a microservice produces an event or completes a task, it notifies the orchestrator. The orchestrator, in turn, processes this information and decides which microservice should be activated next based on predefined business logic. 

Building on the previous example, let’s see what the orchestration process would look like. When a client requests a contract, the orchestrator takes control and coordinates the actions of different services. The contract request service receives the request and notifies the orchestrator, who then directs the contract generation service to create the document. Once generated, the orchestrator receives the information and proceeds to the next action, instructing the electronic signature service to proceed with the validation and signing of the contract. Finally, the orchestrator instructs the document delivery service to deliver the signed contract to the client. 

With this approach, the orchestrator ensures that each service runs in the appropriate order and that information flows efficiently. 

In many cases, a combination of Choreographer and Orchestrator can be optimal. In a hybrid approach, you can leverage, for example, the flexibility of choreography for business logic and the centralized coordination of the orchestrator for operational and resource management. 

Trustcloud Choreographer: resilience and security 

The TrustCloud Choreographer takes advantage of component autonomy to avoid compromising the entire structure in the event of a failure or adverse event. Choreography is an example of resilience at the highest level. It allows isolating the impact to that specific component, rather than affecting the entire system. The other components can continue to operate normally and minimize the damage. 

It enables the implementation of specific security measures in each service, such as authentication, authorization, and encryption, all managed independently. 

Companies can adapt very quickly to business needs (adding services or new functions to an existing service) without disrupting the whole. 

Contact TrustCloud experts here and discover the benefits of adopting the TrustCloud Choreographer.