Steve Buzzard, Principal Architect, GSI Commerce
Date & Time/Location: 3-27-09, 10:15am-11:15am, Salon E
We shall present a technical overview of the GSI E-Commerce Platform, focusing on its evolution from an application centric to a services centric architecture. We shall briefly cover the history of services within the platform and the increasing demand for discrete platform capabilities exposed as services (the "why"), but will concentrate primarily on the technology and governance decisions made thus far in our journey (the "how"). We will describe our approach, which is necessarily agile and iterative in nature, understanding that many decisions made will require course correction and some may have to be re-thought entirely (and how such an approach can and must fit into the corporate reality of longer term budget and schedule commitments). We will touch on the technology, process, and organizational trade-offs inherent in making such a disruptive change to a living and breathing platform, one that must continue be enhanced and expanded as features come and go and new stores come online. Finally, we will go over lessons learned thus far and benefits gained and a glimpse into where we see our platform services evolving in the years ahead.