Micro-services are not a magic bullet.

That said a it's fairly common too have need to cross services -- to have something aware of all services to coordinate some aspect. That thing, itself, could be a micro-service that helps you split up everything else.

Of course, it's much easier to build as a micro-service than to convert to micro service. It sounds like this article had a lot of coupled services to start with, so going to micro-services was not just isolating components but rewriting a lot of business logic