A distributed system's topology can significantly impact its architecture, with simpler topologies potentially offering advantages in terms of ease of deployment, maintenance, scaling, and resilience. A comparison between two document databases (MongoDB) and two wide column stores (Apache HBase and Couchbase Server) reveals that the latter has a more modular and simple topology, which may lead to better scalability and performance. The article highlights the importance of balancing flexibility and simplicity in distributed system design, with modularity not necessarily being reflected in the topology.