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Presentation: "From Parts to a Whole: Modular Development of a Large-Scale e-Commerce Site"

Track: Building Integrated Applications with Web Technologies / Time: Thursday 16:50 - 17:40 / Location: Fleming

In this session, we will show how OTTO, Germany’s largest online fashion retailer, used a system-of-systems approach to enable modular, parallel development of its ambitious shop relaunch. We’ll talk about the Otto.de platform’s macro and micro architecture, the modularization into autonomous subsystems, as well as the challenges, both technical and organizational, in integrating the parts into a consistent whole using simple Web Technologies. Topics covered also include cross-cutting concerns such as an asset server, the approach to platform engineering and quality assurance, aggregation of front-end components including caching strategies, and the management of APIs and media types.

A green field approach based on open source components, a distributed architecture instead of a monolith, cross-functional and agile engineering teams with a strong devops focus, continuous delivery and fast feedback as the new culture on product development - these are the characteristics of OTTO's new online world. Launched in October 2013 the new shop managed the traffic peak before Christmas successfully.

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Oliver Wegner, Head of Technical Product Development at OTTO E-Commerce

Oliver Wegner

Biography: Oliver Wegner

Oliver has been working at OTTO E-Commerce since 2006 on establishing technology as a core competence at OTTO. To this end he built up an engineering organization and formed teams for software development, quality assurance and architecture.

In 2011 he started a project to replace the legacy Online Shop Otto.de with a new platform. Oliver wrote an article about this lightweight architecture published in the German Engineering magazine Objektspektrum and has spread these ideas to other IT divisions at OTTO. For more details see the dev+ops blog.

Twitter: @olliwegner

Stefan Tilkov, SOA & REST Authority, innoQ Founder & Track Host

Stefan Tilkov

Biography: Stefan Tilkov

Stefan Tikov is a decent-frequency blogger, tweets at @stilkov and is a frequent speaker at conferences in Germany and abroad. He is the author of the book “REST und HTTP”. Stefan also used to be lead SOA editor on InfoQ.

Stefan has been involved in the design of large-scale, distributed systems for almost two decades, using a variety of technologies and tools ranging from C++ and CORBA over J2EE/Java EE and Web Services to REST and Ruby on Rails.

Co-founder and principal consultant at innoQ, Stefan spends his time alternating between advising customers on new technologies and taking the blame from his co-workers for doing so.

Track Host of "Lightweight Integration with Web Technologies"