Software Architecture Superstream: Architecture Patterns for Resilient Systems

A ten minute video from Gregor Hohpe will be included in the recording of this event. Get a sneak peek into the upcoming video series that accompanies Gregor’s successful book, The Software Architect Elevator.

Neal Ford: Introduction (5 minutes) - 8:00am PT | 11:00am ET | 3:00pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford welcomes you to the Software Architecture Superstream.

Juval Löwy: Fireside Chat with Neal Ford (35 minutes) - 8:05am PT | 11:05am ET | 3:05pm UTC/GMT

• Join Neal Ford and Juval Löwy to explore resilient architecture and what software architects need to consider when they’re working with high-volume systems. In this informal discussion, you’ll have the opportunity to ask Neal and Juval questions on this topic.
• Juval Löwy is the founder of IDesign, a master software architect, and the author of several bestsellers. His latest book, Righting Software (Addison-Wesley, 2019), contains his groundbreaking ideas on system and project design. Over the past 20 years, Juval has led the industry with ideas such as microservices serving as the foundation of software design and development. He has mentored thousands of architects across the globe, sharing his insights, techniques, and breakthroughs, and has helped hundreds of companies meet their commitments. Juval participated in Microsoft’s internal strategic design reviews, and Microsoft recognized him as one of the world's top experts and industry leaders, naming him a Software Legend.

Rebecca Parsons: How Will Evolutionary Architecture Evolve? (35 minutes) - 8:40am PT | 11:40am ET | 3:40pm UTC/GMT

• The evolutionary approach to architecture is predicated on the understanding that things will change and that no one can precisely predict how they’ll change, at least over the long term. But it’s possible to postulate some ways that the principles and practices of evolutionary architecture will change in the medium term. Rebecca Parsons examines the future of evolutionary architecture.
• Dr. Rebecca Parsons is Thoughtworks’ CTO emerita, with more years of experience in technology and large-scale software development than she’d like to admit. She recently coauthored Building Evolutionary Architectures with colleagues Neal Ford and Pat Kua. Her interests include parallel and distributed computation, programming languages, domain specific languages, evolutionary architecture, genetic algorithms, and computational science. After completing a Director's Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, she worked as an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida. Rebecca earned a BS in computer science and economics from Bradley University and an MS and PhD in computer science from Rice University.
• Break (5 minutes)

Vikranth Etikyala and Sai Pragna Etikyala: Architecting Resilience—Harnessing Cloud Asynchronous Systems for Storage Movement (35 minutes) - 9:20am PT | 12:20pm ET | 4:20pm UTC/GMT

• Building asynchronous, event-driven systems can be daunting. Managing states, ensuring resilience, maintaining traceability, and handling myriad other challenges often require more effort than building the functionality itself. Vikranth Etikyala and Sai Pragna Etikyala dive into the complexities of building asynchronous systems and how workflow orchestrators in the cloud can help. With plenty of practical examples, you’ll come away with a solid understanding of workflow orchestrators' transformative role in asynchronous systems, empowering you to build reliable, efficient, and easy-to-navigate systems.
• Vikranth Etikyala is a senior staff software engineer and cloud expert at the fintech company SoFi, where he leads the team of engineers building SoFi Bank 2.0 infrastructure using modern cloud technologies. Previously, he helped build foundational storage infrastructure for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and led scaling efforts during S3’s exponential growth, spearheading features like List V2, Transfer Acceleration and Intelligent-Tiering, which now handle millions of transactions per second, moving petabytes of data. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from Northeastern University.
• Sai Pragna Etikyala is technical lead of the team responsible for A2P 10DLC compliance for messaging at Twilio. Her innovative and agile approach to software engineering and leadership has distinguished her as a significant contributor to the telecommunications realm. Previously, Sai held key roles at Amazon Web Services, Yahoo, and Cerner, where she developed robust end-to-end solutions and managed complex operations. She holds a master's degree in computer science from Arizona State University.

Sean Chittenden and Chris Casano: Strategies to Mitigate Outages and Maximize Uptime (Sponsored by Cockroach Labs) (30 minutes) - 9:55am PT | 12:55pm ET | 4:55pm UTC/GMT

• If a database outage were to cost your business a million dollars an hour (or minute), how much should you invest to prevent it? For industries like banking and finance, which face growing resilience regulations with strict expectations of infrastructure hardiness, the stakes are even higher. Sean Chittenden and Chris Casano, experienced former owners of massive applications, will share zero downtime strategies that organizations can adopt to mitigate outage risks and maximize uptime.
• Sean Chittenden, senior director of engineering at Cockroach Labs, is an expert in databases and high-availability distributed systems, renowned for proficiency in PostgreSQL and CockroachDB, and dedicated to delivering practical insights into contemporary database technologies.
• Chris Casano is the senior manager for sales engineering at Cockroach Labs. Previously, he was a senior sales engineer at Cloudera Hortonworks and Oracle.
• This session will be followed by a 30-minute Q&A in a breakout room. Stop by if you have more questions for Sean and Chris.
• Break (10 minutes)

Jennifer Moran: Building Resilient Workloads on AWS (35 minutes) - 10:35am PT | 1:35pm ET | 5:35pm UTC/GMT

• Jennifer Moran offers a comprehensive exploration of the AWS Resilience Lifecycle Framework, guiding you through each stage of the journey from planning and design to implementation and optimization and providing practical strategies and best practices for building resilient architectures on AWS. You’ll gain an understanding of resilience principles, learn how to identify and mitigate common failure scenarios, and explore techniques for enhancing workload resilience. Whether you're new to AWS or a seasoned practitioner, you’ll learn how to navigate the AWS Resilience Lifecycle effectively and help your organization improve its resilience posture on AWS.
• Jennifer Moran is a senior resilience specialist solutions architect for AWS. With a diverse background spanning various technical disciplines, she brings a wealth of experience to the topic of resilience and finds fulfillment in helping customers design resilient solutions, ensuring that they can navigate challenges with confidence. She’s also a passionate advocate for women in tech who works to break down barriers and empower individuals from underrepresented groups. Jennifer enjoys speaking publicly to share her expertise on resilience and inspire others to build resilient workloads in the cloud.

Bernd Ruecker: Mastering Long-Running Processes in Modern Architectures (35 minutes) - 11:10am PT | 2:10pm ET | 6:10pm UTC/GMT

• Navigating the challenges of long-running processes is an important skill for surviving modern architecture. The complexities arise from the growing distribution of systems and the need to address issues related to remote communication. Bernd Ruecker shows you how process orchestration can help. Tools like microservice orchestrators or workflow engines are built to implement long-running capabilities, and there is a new generation of tools that can work at infinite scale and solve high-throughput, low-latency scenarios. As a result, long-running capabilities are available to any project, enabling software engineers to make informed choices regarding domain boundaries and overarching architectural decisions. You’ll see real-life examples and sample code (available on GitHub) to help you adopt long-running processes in your architecture.
• Bernd Ruecker is cofounder and chief technologist of Camunda, an open source software company reinventing process automation that fits into modern architectures around distributed systems, microservices, domain-driven design, event-driven architecture, and reactive systems. He’s also the author of Practical Process Automation and coauthor of Real-Life BPMN. A software developer at heart, he has innovated process automation deployed in highly scalable and agile environments such as T-Mobile, Lufthansa, ING, and Atlassian, and has contributed to various open source workflow engines for more than 15 years. He’s also a regular speaker at conferences around the world and a frequent contributor to several technology publications.

Neal Ford: Closing Remarks (5 minutes) - 11:45am PT | 2:45pm ET | 6:45pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford closes out today’s event.

Upcoming Software Architecture Superstream events:

• Event-Driven Architecture and Domain-Driven Design for Data-Driven Systems - August 14, 2024