1. Lessons Learned: Walmart Canada
Revitalizing an Aging Architecture for Web Scale

2. Once upon a time…

3. Our story
• 45-year-old traditional
retailer
• Competitive market
pressure
• Technical blockers
Challenge

4. • Modernized architecture
• Delivered mobile first
strategy
• Completed in 12 months
Solution
Our story

5. Let’s start at the beginning…

6. Why online?
6
e-commerce
5% of retail sales
e-commerce
20% of retail sales

7. Expanding a market
7
$100 billion today $400 billion tomorrow?

8. 8

9. 9

10. Challenge?
10
• Routine crashes
• Complex scalability
• Poor productivity
• Proprietary, closed-
source

11. Meet the “wall”
11
Crashes!Slow!
$$$$$
$
$$$$$
$
$$$$$
$ATG + FatWire

12. Making the introduction
12
meet

13. It’s time for a new approach.

14. Java is a first-class citizen of Play and Akka
Leverage your existing
infrastructure and toolset
Play Framework
• Toolkit for building RESTful
APIs on the JVM
• Rails-like developer
productivity with first class
Java and Scala APIs
• Built on Akka for performance,
resilience and scalability on
demand
Apache Spark
• Typesafe offers
developer support for
Apache Spark, an open-
source cluster computing
framework
• Run programs up to 100x
faster than Hadoop
MapReduce in memory
• Write applications quickly
in Java or Scala
Akka
• Lightweight toolkit
for creating
message-driven
applications on the
JVM
• Create loosely
coupled, resilient
and elastic systems
that adapt and scale
to meet the needs of
your business
Typesafe Reactive Platform
Scalable language built for multi-core cloud era,
integrates object-oriented and functional
Enables developers to be more productive while
retaining full interoperability w/ Java
Use Scala, Java, or both

15. RESTful API endpoints
model tier IO streams persistence
Typesafe Reactive Platform
HTTP
controller tier

16. React to users
16
Initial Request
HTML
Async
JSON
Web Tier
Recommendation API
• Imagine guaranteed response times.
• How? Progressively enhanced UI, modular
architecture.

17. React to load
17
• Imagine guaranteed uptime, even during spikes on Black Friday and Boxing Day.
• How? Scaling out, stateless architecture.

18. React to failure
18
• Imagine protecting back-end heritage systems from cascading failures.
• How? Circuit breakers, Reactive application development.
1 ms 10 ms 3 ms
2 ms 4 ms 15 ms

19. 19
Build your next gen platform with
stay invested in the

20. Play
Search & Browse
Endeca
Assember API
Endeca
Data Foundry
Akka
Catalog ETL
Endeca
Experience
Manager
Endeca
MDEX
ATG
Cart & Checkout
API
Walmart
Enterprise
Services
(ESB, etc)
Walmart
Enterprise
Services
(ESB, etc)
Walmart
Enterprise
Services
(ESB, etc)
Walmart
Enterprise
Services
(ESB, etc)
Walmart
Enterprise
Services
(ESB, etc)
You don’t need to start from scratch
20

21. Removing the “wall” from the
“mart”
21
$$$$$
$
$$$$$
$
$$$$$
$

22. • Conversions up 20%
• Mobile orders up 98%
• No downtime Black Friday
or Boxing Day
Business Uplift
Our story

23. • Moved off expensive
hardware
• On cheap virtual x86
servers
• 20% - 50% cost savings
• ~ 40% compute cycles
Operational Savings
Our story

24. Industry Recognition
Our story

25. Our Customers

26. Adoption
Online Services
Retail
Education
Technology
Social
Media
Finance