Big Ideas in App Architecture

Latest Episodes:

From Legacy to Cloud: Success stories from migrating mission-critical applications Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

At Ameren, resilient infrastructure is what keeps the lights on for millions of residents across the Midwest. We caught up with Kishore Koduri, Ameren’s Senior Director of Enterprise Architecture to hear about what goes into modernizing such critical applications as well as what any enterprise can learn from his experiences.
Join as we discuss:

How to build roadmaps, create migration plans, and monitor progress during large-scale digital transformation projects
The challenges of breaking down a monolithic application into microservices
Why you shouldn’t just implement new technology for the sake of it
Fascinating practical use cases for ChatGPT and Google Bard

Building purpose-driven engineering cultures with BNY Mellon’s Head of Engineering Enablement Aug 29, 2023

Show notes

“Successful platforming means getting real product managers involved, promoting reuse, and measuring happiness and success. Letting the voice of the customer guide us is essential – we want to be a respected and effective platform”

Jason Valentino, Head of Engineering Enablement at BNY Mellon sat down with us to share his highlights and valuable insights from his 10+ year history leading engineering teams at companies including Capital One Labs and Peloton.
Join us as we discuss:

Why it’s critical for enterprises to focus on good developer experiences
The incubation projects that evolved into shipped-to-production products
Creative ways to keep engineering teams aligned on the latest technical trends
Why Jason thinks GitHub is the most game changing engineering tool of the last decade

Modernizing Insurance Application Architecture at New York Life Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

Building the software behind life insurance systems is a complicated endeavor. Organizations need to consider the need to keep millions of data records with decades-long histories, factor in the many variables for individual policies, and comply with legal regulations that can vary from state to state.
In this special bonus episode with our former host Tim Veil, Tim examines the intricacies of the life insurance industry with Mike Murphy, Corporate Vice President, Life Insurance Domain Architect at New York Life for a fascinating technical conversation.Join as we discuss:

Effectively writing software for insurance policies
The problem with sequential IDs
Soft-coded vs hard-coded practices
The challenges of horizontal scale for insurance application architecture

Innovation and Disruption: How Materialize Pioneered a New Era in Data Streaming Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

We delve into the journey of Arjun Narayan , Co-Founder and CEO of Materialize, a streaming SQL database for real-time applications, live dashboards, and streaming data pipelines. He shares his personal experiences in the field of data analytics, his fascination with distributed systems, and his passion for working with databases.
Arjun shares how his mind was blown by the Spanner paper back in 2012 and its impact on prevailing notions of weak isolation and consistency. We also explore the challenges of building complex systems, the evolution of streaming systems, and the practical applications of Materialize in real-world scenarios.
Join us as we discuss:
How Materialize simplifies the communication of its technology to users
The value of Materialize's join capability
The challenges of streaming and the importance of state management
How to survive backlash from Hacker News comments

Stories from an SRE: How Hans Knecht builds better developer experiences Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

“My goal is to basically be AWS, but for the developers in the sense that like, my five man SRE team can support 10 developers, it can support 1000 developers” - Hans Knecht, Platform Engineer
Hans Knecht has over 10+ years in the industry at companies including Mission Lane and Capital One. Whether he is designing self-serving platforms, creating comprehensive documentation, or providing technical recommendations, his efforts ultimately help developers take the tedium out of building great applications.
Join as we discuss:

The importance of good documentation, and why the phrase “They don’t quit a bad job, they quit a bad manager” can also apply to platforms with poor documentation.
The terrifying moment when a mistake in a piece of code was pushed to production (And how his team got everything back up and running).
Why technical conversations are actually business conversations.
Why Hans thinks everyone should learn Kubernetes.

Inside Chick-fil-A’s infrastructure recipe for a perfect customer experience Jul 18, 2023

Show notes

Brian Chambers began his Chick-fil-A journey behind the counter. Today, he is the Chief Architect at Chick-fil-A Corporate, where he oversees the teams building the infrastructure that powers every step of the customer journey, from mobile ordering to quality control.
Behind its speedy service and chicken sandwiches, is a state-of-the-art architecture that collects over 1 billion data points per month. From its cloud infrastructure to the edge compute clusters running Kubernetes in each Chick-fil-A restaurant, the customer experience is the result of a thoughtfully designed, cloud-first, and zero-touch approach.
Join as we discuss:

The internal innovation process at Chick-fil-A and how great ideas can come from anywhere in the company.
How edge computing helps Chick-fil-A solve capacity challenges, collect telemetry data, ensure high quality food, and drive better restaurant worker and customer experiences.
How Chick-fil-A’s engineers designed a high availability system capable of withstanding spiky events such as lunch rushes and promotions.
Why Kubernetes is a no-brainer for their use-cases.

Modernizing from the Mainframe: An Exploration of Distributed Systems Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

Chris Stura, Director of PwC UK has had over 20+ years in the world of software, wearing many hats from Software Engineer to Chief Architect to Director of Technology Delivery.
During his time at PwC, Chris’ projects have spanned helping banks migrate from legacy systems to modern architecture, working on the performance analytics software Cloud Cost Assurance, and technical consulting for financial services and capital markets.
Join as we discuss:

How a passion for video games at a young age ultimately kickstarted a decades-long career in software architecture
What enterprises and architects should know before migrating from legacy systems to distributed architecture
Chris’ thoughts on serverless, open source, Kubernetes, generative AI, and more
Why Chris thinks the base requirements for knative are too high

IoT Standards & Data Mesh: Utility Facility App Architecture Jun 06, 2023

Show notes

In the latest episode of "Big Ideas in App Architecture," we dive into the world of utility facilities and their app architecture with guest Grant Muller, Vice President of Applications and Technology Architecture at Xylem. Grant shares valuable insights on bridging end-to-end solutions while focusing on energy efficiency and data collection in utility facilities.
Grant explains IoT standards in utility facilities and the importance of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems for device automation and control. He emphasizes the need to address cyber security concerns and highlights the significance of dividing the workload through a robust architecture.
The conversation then delves into data management, with a focus on understanding data lakehouse patterns and motivating the centralization of data locations. Grant also gets into his thoughts on Data Mesh and its usage in managing and scaling data effectively.
Join as we discuss:

IoT data on the edge
Cyber security risk management
Data lakehouse patterns and the expansion of data meshes

Be sure to rate the podcast 5-stars on your favorite podcast platform like Apple and Spotify.
You can also watch every episode on YouTube!

Relational Data Problems: Doubble Dating Application Architecture May 30, 2023

Show notes

This week, Mattias Sio Fjellvang, CTO and Co-Founder of Doubble, joins to discuss the technical challenges he’s faced while building a "double dating" application. Mattias discusses tech stack decisions, developing with a completely distributed team, and the incredible month-to-month growth of the application.
Mattias talks about what it was like for ‘a React guy’ to develop using Dart and Flutter. Taking a prototype built on MongoDB and flipping it to CockroachDB to solve the scalability, reliability, and data compliance issues challenges. Join as we discuss:

The application design of a double-dating application
CockroachDB vs Mongo
The use of Github’s co-pilot development
How Doubble handles downtime

Be sure to rate the podcast 5-stars on your favorite podcast platform like Apple and Spotify. You can also watch every episode on YouTube!

From Legacy Systems to Limitless Scaling with Paycor’s Systems Engineering Fellow May 23, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, Adam Koch, Systems Engineering Fellow at Paycor, discusses transitioning from legacy systems to the cloud and its impact on application architecture.
Adam draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience in the field to help frame the evolution of data architecture and infrastructure. He shares his perspective on the limitless possibilities that cloud scale brings, while also giving an honest accounting of the challenges that come with it.
Additional topics include:

Maintaining boundaries on acquired domains
Ensuring effective master data authentication
Strategies to address and prevent downtime
Building effective teams for effective architecture

Be sure to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform like Apple and Spotify. You can also watch every episode on our YouTube channel.