Building a Production-Ready Social Networking Backend with Typesafe Reactive Platform
Customer Company Size
Startup
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Typesafe Reactive Platform
- Akka
Tech Stack
- Scala
- Java
- Amazon EC2
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Conspire is a TechStars company that specializes in analyzing email data to provide users with detailed analytics about their email network. Founded by Paul McReynolds and Alex Devkar in 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Conspire aims to help users understand the strength of connections between people. The company maintains an always-up-to-date, weighted network of connections without requiring any effort from users. When a user needs to reach a person or company, Conspire identifies the strongest path of connections in the user's extended network. After participating in TechStars Cloud 2013, Conspire established its headquarters in downtown Boulder, Colorado.
The Challenge
Conspire faced the challenge of revamping their backend system to support a customer-facing product. Their original backend was a multi-threaded Java application with a traditional concurrency model, which was too complicated and not suitable for future developments. The team needed a new solution that could handle scalability, resiliency, and simplicity, as the existing codebase was not up to the task.
The Solution
Conspire chose to build their new backend using the Typesafe Reactive Platform, specifically leveraging Akka for its scalability, resiliency, and simplicity. Initially, the team opted for Java due to its familiarity, but eventually transitioned to Scala, thanks to Ryan Tanner's expertise and advocacy. The architecture was designed to decouple the backend from the frontend, allowing for independent service operation and fault tolerance. Akka's 'Let it Crash' philosophy was embraced, enabling the system to handle node failures without impacting the overall backend. The backend was divided into three siloed services—IMAP processing, analytics, and mailing—overseen by a supervisor, ensuring reduced cohesion and improved resilience.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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