Walmart Boosts Conversions by 20% with Typesafe Reactive Platform and Scala Stack
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- Canada
Product
- Scala
- Akka
- Play
- Oracle ATG
Tech Stack
- Scala
- Akka
- Play
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Edge Computing & Edge Intelligence
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Walmart Canada, a subsidiary of Walmart, is one of the largest retailers in Canada, operating over 150 stores. It is also a significant player in the online commerce sector, with a rapidly growing mobile shopping customer base. As part of the global Walmart brand, Walmart Canada is committed to providing a seamless shopping experience both in-store and online. The company is focused on leveraging technology to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. With a strong emphasis on innovation, Walmart Canada continuously seeks to improve its ecommerce platform to meet the evolving needs of its customers.
The Challenge
Walmart Canada aimed to enhance its online store experience by creating a responsive web presence across various devices while reducing backend costs and improving scalability. The existing architecture based on Oracle ATG required specialized development teams and long cycles, which hindered development speed. Additionally, the reliance on expensive hardware limited scalability and performance, as the legacy Java infrastructure could only handle limited simultaneous requests. Walmart needed a modern, event-driven architecture to handle more concurrent processes without additional compute capacity. Integration with existing infrastructure was crucial to avoid downtime, as the ecommerce store needed to remain operational at all times.
The Solution
Walmart Canada, in collaboration with Nurun, opted for a comprehensive upgrade of its ecommerce platform using a Scala stack, which includes Scala, Akka, and Play. This transition allowed Walmart to move away from its legacy Oracle ATG system towards a modern, Reactive environment. The new architecture enabled Walmart to handle a large number of concurrent users efficiently, leveraging multi-core capabilities without the need for complex multi-thread programming. By separating tasks that required ATG from those that could be handled by Scala, Walmart was able to shift a significant portion of its backend tasks to commodity virtual machines on its private cloud. This move not only improved scalability but also reduced reliance on expensive hardware. The integration of the new system with existing infrastructure was seamless, ensuring minimal disruption to operations.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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