In the last 15 years or so, there has been a great deal of effort undertaken to decompose layered monoliths into microservices which is, as has already been noted in this section, incredibly difficult. In truth, the microservices architecture is not the only path to decomposing a layered monolith into standalone services. Prior to the introduction of that pattern (along with the various, enabling X factors), the next logical step in a growing system was the Distributed N-Tier Architecture. Let us explore this evolutionary path by continuing along the architecture continuum to our first distributed abstract style.