What term defines independent scaling of components in an application?

The term that defines independent scaling of components in an application is microservices architecture. This design approach allows an application to be broken down into smaller, loosely coupled services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. Each microservice is responsible for a specific function or business capability and can be scaled based on its own needs, rather than scaling the entire application as a whole. This flexibility leads to more efficient resource utilization and improved performance since individual services can be optimized and scaled according to their unique workloads.

In contrast, approaches like monolithic scaling deploy the entire application as a single unit, making it more challenging to scale individual components. Hybrid deployment combines different environments or models but does not inherently provide independent scaling. Server-based architecture usually refers to a setup dependent on specific server configurations and does not emphasize the flexibility of scaling components independently.

Understanding microservices architecture is crucial for modern application design, as it aligns well with cloud-native principles and caters to scalability, maintainability, and agility in software development.