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Make the ConnectionBig Enterprise Software

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Introduction - Setting the cat amongst the pigeons

“The gap between what enterprise-class commercial packages provide and what is actually needed is widening. This is especially true for internet facing applications. Innovative solutions that really scale and easily support modern techniques such as continuous delivery are written by practitioners for practitioners. They originate with many internet scale companies and are refined as open source software. Big enterprise solutions often obstruct effective delivery due to their accumulated bloat, cumbersome licensing restrictions, and feature sets that are driven by check-lists and imaginary requirements far removed from the realities of most development teams.”

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Introduction - Continued

- Many passionate views/opinions received

- Comments made publicly and privately

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Why do I care?- Our approach has caused waves in the organization

- We are envied for our rate of delivery and value add to our business

- We work with extremely talented people in an engaging environment

- We do very cool stuff!

- Our developers do not support our architectural blueprints, what?

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Objectives

- Communicate feedback received

- Understand our current state

- Find common ground

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Your Thoughts and Opinions

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Your Thoughts and Opinions - Continued

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Your Thoughts and Opinions

Differences in interpretation of “Big Enterprise Software”

- Open Source vs Commercial eg. IBM Websphere Application Server vs Apache Tomcat

- Java EE vs Java Vanilla

- Java vs Other eg. Golang

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Open Source vs Commercial

- Strong view that we could achieve equal or better results with Open Source Software

- Apache Tomcat, Jboss?

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Java EE vs Java Vanilla

- Strong concerns raised on the testability of Java EE

- Alternatives proposed to container based component model of Java EE

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Java vs Other

- Strong views that Java is ‘Dead’

- ‘Modern’ languages emerging Scala, Golang

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Our Current State in Context

- eMarkets architecture blueprint based on Java Enterprise Edition

- Vendor partnership with IBM in line with Standard Bank group technology standards

- Middleware technology stack comprises IBM Websphere Application Server coupled with Websphere Message Broker and IBM MQ

- Infrastructure provisioned globally with patterns for high availability and scalability

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Our Current State in Context – Challenges Faced- Message Broker – Steep learning curve, inhibits

effective use of the technology

- Testability of Java EE stack has proven challenging

- Implementing high availability also proving challenging

- Support engagement is ‘complicated’

- ActiveMQ – Break away from the Standard Bank mold, but will it stand the test of time, and capacity, and resilience, and availability, and …

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Our Current State in Context – The Reality

- We are a bank

- We have 40 000+ employees

- We have a global presence and footprint in 20+ countries

- We have a customer base of more than 5.4m

- We are an enterprise

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Our Current State in Context – The Reality- We have to be aware of the scale of the

environment that we are building software for- Standard Bank is 152 years old, we are building

strategic systems that will probably outlive our time at the bank and will still need to be maintained

- Our business operates 24/5/365 in geographically dispersed regions. Our systems have to be available

- Our business is increasingly dependent on our software

- We have to be responsible- Architectural blueprints, vendor partnerships,

enterprise platforms, maybe we need it?

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Common Ground

- We will not be bleeding or leading edge, but should we stop looking at industry trends, CERTAINLY NOT!

- Changing the direction of the Titanic is slow, but our culture and approach has certainly caused big waves

- Our focus on strong engineering practices and a

drive for constant improvement sets us apart, we are certainly on a good wicket to drive and influence future change

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Common Ground - Continued

- You have the support of an architecture team that is willing to think critically and challenge the status quo

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Questions?