I work on an application like that. Not 3:25 but not that far off either. I'm quite content with the situation. The apps all handle a bespoke data connection,

I work on an application like that. Not 3:25 but not that far off either. I'm quite content with the situation. The apps all handle a bespoke data connection, converting it into a standard model which they submit to our message broker. From then on our services are much larger and smaller in number. It's very write-once-run-forever, some of these have not been touched since their inception years ago, resulting in a decreased complexity and maintenance cost. The trick is not having REST calls all over yours services. You're just building a distributed monolith at that point.