comparing legacy and modern e-commerce solutions
TRANSCRIPT
Legacy vs Modern e-commerceMike Ensor – Practice Director, Digital Transformation Services
Dev9 provides technology delivery that dramatically improves time-to-market.
We make software delivery predictable and transparent
with a high level of automation.
Dev9: Custom Software, Continuous Delivery
Service Offerings
Java & JavaScript
Continuous Delivery
Application Platform
Modernization
Amazon Web Services
Content Management and Custom e-
commerce
Identity Management
Software Quality Strategy
& Implementation
Who am I?
Mike Ensor• Dev > Architect > Mgmt• Worked with many e-commerce
platforms• ATG, Demandware, Intershop,
Broadleaf, hybris, os commerce, magento, CommerceTools
• 9 major e-commerce implementations
Agenda
•Why do we care about modernization?•What is legacy anyway?•Compare critical areas for modern software•Conclusion•Q&A
Terminology
Terminology
Why do we care?• Software degrades with time• 3-5 year shelf-life• Fear of change
• Companies evolve• New features• Respond to customer demand• Regulation and compliance changes• Company changes directions• Speed, quality, performance enhancements
•Mergers and acquisitions•New leadership or competition
Risks of not modernizing?•Security risks•Out of compliance/regulatory• Incompatibility w/new software, techniques and delivery
methods•Rising operational costs• Resources are rare and expensive• Infrastructure costs• Lose top resources
•Decreasing time-to-market and feature development
What prohibits updates?
Complexity Resources Budget Requirements Political capital Fear
Today’s e-commerce world•E-commerce is no longer a side division•Sports Authority
•Scale is everything•Victoria Secret and Macy’s
•Closing gap vs brick-and-mortar•2016 online sales up 4.2%
Why are we here today?•What replaces legacy for e-commerce?•Case study: Amazon Go•Modern software delivery (CI/CD)•Shareability of data
•Built for integration•Machine Learning, hardware,
inventory, identity mgmt, mobile devices, many, many more
What defines legacy solutions?• Large monolith tied to single enterprise
database• License costs tied to success• Quarterly or Yearly updates• Center of architecture• Desktop first, bolt on channels later• Scale added as bolt-on• Requires downtime or low volume for updates• Limited hosting options
What defines a modern solution?• Reduce costs and increase speed with full
automation• Tools & processes to mitigate risk
• Encapsulate functionality (modularity)• Operate within the ecosystem• Highly communicatable
• Designed for scale• Payment type that doesn’t prohibit scale
• *-First (quality, cloud, mobile, i18n, security)• Framework over Features• Microservcies and Reactive Programming
Areas of comparison
Feature Sets Modularity
Resources Deployment Model
Feature Sets: Legacy• Large feature sets are like concrete• Slow feature growth• Long time-to-market• Quarterly or longer
• Requires larger QA regression•Most companies do not use a fraction of features
•Overloaded functions cause version lock•Can’t create common feature set beyond generic•Most companies don’t use all of the features
Feature Sets: Modern• Provides building blocks for commerce• Products, Categorization/Catalog, Promotions,
Cart, Basic pricing, Checkout, Customers• Decoupled Entities• Domain Driven
• Quality first: Includes automated testing coverage• Ensure core functionality continues to work• Flexible enough to extend for integrations
• Designed for feature extension• Custom Attribute/Value support• More in a moment
• Liskov principle for feature enhancement
Modularity: Legacy• Community-driven or closed modules
• Introducing risks• Security, roadmap, additional licenses, ownership,
performance, inconsistent UX• Inconsistent development standards
• Bolt-on functionality• Often through M&A (aka “Oracle Integrated” or
“Frankenstein”)• Course grained
• Monolithic application• Small changes require full deployment• ”Modules” are built into the application
• Mitigated using Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)• Channels are additional “sites”• Back office “jobs” are same system
Modularity: Modern• Utilize or enable microservices• Loosely coupled, highly cohesive,
independent services• Functionality in services by domain• Promotes re-use across ecosystem
•Makes use of modern practices such as reactive development• Use of queues• Addresses common parallel functionality
• Utilize interfaces over concrete services• Ephemeral compute components
Resources: Legacy•Legacy experience is expensive•Require specialized training & certifications•Estimated certification costs ~$30k
for IBM Advanced Developer•Proprietary source •Hidden documentation and community
Resources: Modern• Leverage Open Source technologies• Right tool for the job• Utilize tools for frequent, quality
releases• General technologists over specialists• Only train for “commerce” concepts• Large abundance of developers
• DevOps and Continuous Delivery at core• Practice Agile development
methodologies
Deployment Model: Legacy•Monolithic application relying on single
enterprise database• Difficulty in changing model or data
• Small changes result in entire deployment• Long boot times• “Big Bang” deployments
• Software and architecture not designed for horizontal scale• Not ready for cloud
• Inefficient static infrastructure• Licenses based on best-guess “peak”
numbers
Deployment Model: Modern• Utilize microservices• Containers for isolated deployments• Immutable infrastructure• Smaller work in progress (WIP)• Extend functionality w/ external services
• Framework over Platform• Cloud First mentality• Start with Continuous Delivery• Respond quickly to changes in market• Apply updates as they become available
• Designed for multiple uses (true omnichannel)• Architected on top of APIs
Our e-commerce partners
Conclusion•Focus on data and service shareability within enterprise•Resources are expensive, pick technologies to reduce
costs from proprietary software•Composability and distributed computing allows for less
downtime and allows scale where needed• Large feature sets inhibit growth and slow down patches•Cloud-first architectures provide flexibility
Legacy Real-time Modern Real-time
