Sometimes, innovation is born in the midst of a crisis. Unexpected challenges and a sense of urgency force companies to look for new ways of keeping the business going, even as the odds stack up against them. This was the case for one of our biggest customers Matalan, a major fashion and homeware retailer in the U.K. The company operates 230 brick and mortar stores across the country, and 30 international franchise stores within Europe and the Middle East. It also maintains a thriving online channel that runs on the SHIFT platform.
Ryan Townsend
CTO at SHIFT Commerce
Guest Author
With over 15 years experience developing for the web, Ryan Townsend is the CTO of SHIFT Commerce – a SaaS e-commerce platform bringing agility to mid-to-enterprise retailers.
His pragmatic outlook means that—on the rare occasion that he does wear a shirt—his sleeves stay firmly rolled up: even as an exec, his favourite place is right there in the thick of things with his team.
Outside of the office, you’ll usually find him picking up heavy objects in the gym or falling off his mountain bike down the side of a hill.
Editor’s Note: One of the joys of building Heroku is hearing about the exciting applications our customers are crafting. SHIFT Commerce - a platform helping retailers optimize their e-commerce strategy - is a proud and active user of Heroku in building its technology stack. Today, we’re clearing the stage for Ryan Townsend, CTO of SHIFT, as he provides an overview of SHIFT’s journey into building microservices architecture with the support of Apache Kafka on Heroku.
Software architecture has been a continual debate since software first came into existence. The latest iteration of this long-running discussion is between monoliths and microservices – large self-contained applications vs...
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