Release the Kraken A story of node.js in the enterprise

Jeff Harrell

In other words, why you want to adopt node.js

1. Identify customer impact

• Unify web and server teams

• Modern web developers ♥ JavaScript

• Less compile time === faster iterations

• Node.js for prototypes was well accepted

Our customer: Paypal engineers

Start small and don't boil the ocean

2. Choose a pilot project

• Team had already started on Java

• Two people to also build it on node.js

• Java used internal framework based on Spring

• Node.js used kraken.js

Our pilot: account overview

Numbers are hard to argue

3. Show data

• Node.js application built 2x as fast as Java

• Written in fewer lines of code (>33%)

• Double the requests / second

• 35% decrease in response time (↓200ms)

Our data: apples-to-apples

Node.js adoption at PayPal wasn’t always smooth

Problems along the way

• Enterprise mindsets – JavaScript is not a toy

• Moving teams from Java to JavaScript

• Adopting unix / open source philosophies

• Large teams with node.js frameworks (kraken.js)

Our problems

Customer impact + pilot project + data = ?

What happened in the end

• Java/Spring app shut down; node.js app live!

• Engineers are excited to move to node.js

• 12+ additional web apps currently being built

• All future web applications built on node.js !

The conclusion

QuestionsTwitter @juxtajeff

We’re hiring!