1. They are small 2. They are loosely coupled 3. Shared-nothing state 4. They enforce standards for consuming and emitting data 5. They enforce a single standar

1. They are small 2. They are loosely coupled 3. Shared-nothing state 4. They enforce standards for consuming and emitting data 5. They enforce a single standard for piping data from one process to another. This can all be done via libraries with clear APIs, with none of the deployment headache of a microservice.