It is tough to be an application in 2016. The requirements have never been more pressing. It is expected to manage high user load and unimaginable amounts of data; be spread between cloud, mobile devices and anything in between; be ready to be updated several times a day, yet be always available; and deliver near-realtime performance as everything mentioned earlier wasn't challenging enough. As hard as it might sound, it is still doable however certain design principles of scalable, distributed systems should be followed. In this talk, we will discuss those principles as well as introduce Lagom - the reactive microservices framework that lets you utilize these concepts in a concise, clear, and elegant way. Opponents of microservices approach, JEE enthusiasts and Java developers who are generally interested in building systems with modern demands are equally welcome to come and participate in the discussion, where 'highly available' and 'resilient' are treated as technical computer science terms rather than buzzwords. Katrin Shechtman Software Engineer with years of experience developing large platforms in C, C++, Java and Scala utilizing many different frameworks. Currently works at Lightbend as Enterprise Architect helping big enterprises embrace a world of Reactive Systems and Big Data. [WQG-1208]