Monoliths, services and microservices @ bol.com

Peter Paul van de Beek

May 12, 2016

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The shop for everyone

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Multi-channel approach

Mobile website / Mobile weblog / Mobile marketing

eBook apps External apps

Bol.com from online bookshop to portal for specialised online channels serving the entire Dutch-language region

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Books Entertainment

Electronics Toys

Preloved sales eReading

Small Appliances

White Goods

Marketing via bol.com

Baby

Cooking & Tableware

Health & Beauty Home & BedroomPets

Garden & DIY

2004-2007 2010

Sports & Leisure

1999-2003 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Jewellery & Watches

Bags & Accessories

SECOND-HANDePRODUCTSCOMMERCIAL MARKETING

NEW SPECIALISED CHANNELS

ALSO WORTH KNOWING

Startup in a portacabin Active in Belgium Takeover by Ahold

2008-2009

Picture

•Over 6 million active customers

•Virtual footfall of almost 1 million per day

•Over 11 million products

•More then a 1.000 employees in Utrecht

•1 in 2 Dutch and Belgian customers who shop online, do so on bol.com

•Ranked among top 10 businesses for customer satisfaction 5

Where is bol.com now? > 95% > 75%

Brand awareness

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IT has a high pace

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10 to 50 scrum teams in 3 years

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Space – Fleet – Team

Retail Platform

Fulfillment Network

Shopping Experience

Technical Platform

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• A few monoliths

• Expose services on the monolith

• Carve out functionality

• Create new functionality as services

• Split “older” services

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History of services @ bol.com

• Catalogue

• Web shop

• Sourcing / Fulfillment

What do you need as an online retailer…

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The early ages

“The many things that you would like to see happening in a good software environment couldn’t be done anymore; there were many complex pieces of software combined into

a single system. It couldn’t evolve anymore. The parts that needed to scale independently were tied into sharing resources with other unknown code paths. There was no

isolation and, as a result, no clear ownership.”

Werner Vogels

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• The shop stays open

• Technical innovation is enabled by business value• Scalability is a business thing

• The hard thing: define boundaries• One purpose

• Some how stuff• Start with a good API• Use mappers where we can’t change the environment

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Carve out services

Software Parade

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Services

• Choose the path of the least hurt

• Decisions matter not paper

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Architecture is always a trade off

• Rest• Or queueing (async)

• Swagger

• CI / CD• Mayfly

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Technical stuff

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How many service are involved?

Thanks!till next bol.com

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Ravioli oriented architecture