In today's fast-paced digital landscape, businesses are constantly searching for ways to become more agile, scalable, and efficient. We've automated tasks and digitized workflows, but often the core business logic—the complex processes that define how a company operates—remains brittle, hard to change, and siloed within departments or legacy systems.
What if you could treat a complex business process, like onboarding a new customer or generating a financial report, with the same rigor and scalability as a modern software component?
This is the promise of a powerful new paradigm: Services-as-Software. It’s the practice of defining any business capability as a robust, versioned service that can be deployed, managed, and invoked on-demand via a simple API.
This post will explore what Services-as-Software means, how it differs from traditional approaches, and how you can leverage it using platforms like service.do to turn your core operations into scalable, on-demand software.
The Services-as-Software model is built on a simple yet transformative loop: Define, Deploy, and Deliver. This breaks down the walls between business logic and software engineering, enabling a concept known as Business-as-Code.
The first step is to capture a specific business function in code. This isn't about rewriting your entire operation; it's about encapsulating a single, repeatable workflow. Forget complex architectural diagrams and endless meetings. Instead, you define the inputs, outputs, and the steps in between using a clear, concise format.
With service.do, this is as simple as writing a TypeScript function. Let's look at a common example: a customer onboarding workflow.
import { Service, type Context } from '@do/sdk';
// Define the input and output schemas for your service
interface OnboardingInput {
name: string;
email: string;
plan: 'free' | 'pro' | 'enterprise';
}
interface OnboardingOutput {
customerId: string;
welcomeEmailSent: boolean;
status: 'complete' | 'failed';
}
// Create a new Service instance with your business logic
export default new Service<OnboardingInput, OnboardingOutput>({
name: 'customer-onboarding',
description: 'Onboards a new customer, creating an account and sending a welcome email.',
async run(input: OnboardingInput, context: Context): Promise<OnboardingOutput> {
console.log(`Starting onboarding for ${input.email} on plan ${input.plan}`);
// Business logic goes here.
// In a real-world scenario, you would orchestrate other agents:
// e.g., call user.create, email.send, billing.setup agents
const customerId = `cust_${context.invocationId}`;
return {
customerId,
welcomeEmailSent: true,
status: 'complete',
};
},
});
In this example, we've clearly defined the 'customer-onboarding' service. It accepts a customer's details and returns a status. The run function is where the magic happens—it orchestrates the necessary steps to complete the onboarding process.
Once your logic is defined, the next step is deployment. Traditionally, this is a heavy lift involving servers, containers, networks, and security configurations.
The Services-as-Software approach, powered by a platform like service.do, makes this trivial. Because the platform is fully serverless, you don't manage any infrastructure. You simply push your code, and the platform handles the rest:
You focus entirely on the business value expressed in your code, not the infrastructure required to run it.
With your service defined and deployed, it's now a live, callable software component. It's delivered as a simple, powerful API service. This means you can:
You’ve successfully turned a complex business operation into a simple, reusable, and scalable software asset.
If you're a developer, you might be thinking, "This sounds a lot like a microservice." While there are similarities, a service built on service.do is purpose-built for a specific task: Agentic Workflows.
A traditional microservice is a small, independent service. A .do Service is an orchestrator. It's designed to coordinate other agents and services (whether they are microservices, third-party APIs, or other .do services) to accomplish a complex, multi-step business goal. It acts as the "conductor" of an orchestra of tools, ensuring the entire business process is executed correctly.
The possibilities are virtually limitless. If you can describe a business process as a series of steps with a clear input and output, you can model it as a service.
The shift to Services-as-Software represents a fundamental change in how we build and scale modern businesses. By treating your operations as code, you unlock unprecedented levels of agility, consistency, and scalability. You empower your teams to build, deploy, and improve the very logic that runs your company, all without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Ready to turn your business logic into powerful, scalable software? Visit service.do to learn more and start building your first service today.
Q: What is a 'Service-as-Software'?
A: It's the practice of encapsulating a specific business function or workflow—like 'process a payment' or 'generate a report'—into a self-contained, deployable software component. This service can then be versioned, scaled, and invoked via an API, just like any other piece of software.
Q: How is a .do Service different from a microservice?
A: While similar, .do Services are purpose-built for agentic workflows. They are designed to orchestrate other agents and services to complete complex business tasks. They are defined in simple code (Business-as-Code) and managed entirely by the .do platform, abstracting away infrastructure concerns.
Q: What can I build with service.do?
A: You can model any business process. Examples include customer onboarding workflows, data enrichment pipelines, automated financial reporting, lead qualification systems, and content generation services. If you can describe it as a series of steps, you can build it as a service.
Q: Do I need to manage servers to run my services?
A: No. The .do platform is fully serverless. You simply define your service's logic in code, and we handle the deployment, scaling, security, and execution. You focus on the business value, not the infrastructure.