TL;DR Many companies rush into generative AI without realizing just how steep—and unpredictable—the associated expenses can be. Meanwhile, the cost of implementing generative AI in business can range from $0.0005 per 1,000 text units (tokens or characters) if you use a popular commercially available Gen AI tool to over $190,000 for a fully custom solution based on a fine-tuned open-source model.

The concept of microservices, an approach to designing a software application as a set of small services, has been around since at least...