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Architecture evolution from amorphous monolith application to a modular, cloud ready platform

Breaking down a monolith is a much discussed topic today. Yet our journey from a monolith to cloud took us through many ups and downs, challenging decisions and interesting experiments.

We started from a big application covering multiple functionalities for a large variety of purposes, that led to a never-ending story of difficult releases and unsatisfied customers. Aiming for faster, iterative application delivery strategy, balancing in flight project demands with future tech goals, we went through a challenging transition while continuously learning and adapting.

To help you learn from our hard-earned wisdom, I will share in this talk our meaningful experiences. This talk will go over my experience as an architect and opinion leader, highlighting a few of the key aspects and decisions we needed to make based on general theories:

  • Incremental evolution through refactoring or Big Bang rewrite?
    • Our choice was Componentization through refactoring and gradual replacement with rewrite. We could keep some level of engagement with customers and the rest of organization.
  • DRY versus LOOSE COUPLING dilemma
    • It was a dramatic and unpopular decision to copy a large amount of code just to be step in the right direction.
  • Custom Code or Third party software
    • Having customers activating in highly regulated domain like Pharma, there was a deep seeded belief in the organization that we should produce all the software in house for compliance and security reasons. Moving away from that closed system approach was a sort of paradigm switch in our organization.
  • “SaaS first” versus “On premise first”
    • This was a tough business decision recently made with confidence that the software team will be able to deliver.
April 8 @ 12:00
12:00 — 12:45 (45′)

Room A

Coralia Popa