DICK'S Sporting Goods has transformed their infrastructure and applications to be cloud native and use a multi-cloud strategy. They moved from thousands of servers in their own data centers running monolithic applications to using VMware, Azure and GCP with automated deployments in minutes. This improved security, reduced deployment times, and empowered product teams. Their search solution evolved from using a third party engine to a cloud native application on the Spring Framework, handling high traffic volumes and automating failover between clouds. They are now focused on real-time updates and personalized search to better serve customers.

1. Multi-Cloud and Data Transformation at DICK’S

2. How we used to work
Infrastructure
1000’s Servers in 3 Data
centers.
Monolithic Apps
Very little flexibility and
customization options.
Security
Never ending patch cycles!
Athlete Impact
Features and bug fixes
affected by operational and
long deployment cycles.

3. How we work now!
Multi-Cloud
Working with VSphere,
Azure and GCP.
Automated
Deployment
Deploying in minutes
not months.
Product Focused
Breaking silos and
empowering our teams
through labs.
Security
Patching is done on
demand and without athlete
or teammate impact.

4. Why Is Search Important?
Fundamental
Product search is
fundamental to ecommerce.
Influential
Search influences athletes
shopping behavior.
Engaging
More than 50% of people
that visit DICKS.com
engage with search.

5. Motivations
01.
02.
Page Performance
03. Deployment Velocity
04.
05.
Real-time Updates
Resiliency
Sustaining Innovation

6. The DSG Search Solution Journey
May 2018 Oct 2018 May 2019
Cloud Native Application Architecture | Spring Framework | Highly Scalable Search Engine |
MySQL as Backing Service
Batch Process
Source of truth
Search Cluster
MySQL Service

7. The DSG Search Solution Journey
May 2018 Oct 2018 May 2019
Legacy
Solution
3rd
Party
Search
Engine
DSG
Search
Solution
DSG search solution
● Outperformed the other search engines
● Handled 100% of holiday traffic on
Cyber 5
● 250 requests/sec on search
● 2500 requests/sec on search
autocomplete suggestions

8. The DSG Search Solution Journey
May 2018 Oct 2018 May 2019
Multi-cloud failover in place
● From: 2-3 hours to
failover manually
● To: Automated failover
with zero human
intervention

9. Our Current Successes
CI/CD
Complete automation of
deployments.
Better Page
Performance
Reduction of 4+
seconds in page
load time!
Innovation
Creative solutions that
makes business impact
Real Time
Updates
Business has the ability
to change based on
market trends
Resiliency
Multi-Cloud
Strategy

10. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Opening up new potential

11. Automating infrastructure...
Networking Storage
VirtualizationServers
Backups
RuntimeOS Middleware
Security
Monitoring
Upgrades
Upgrades
App
Monolith

12. Networking Storage
VirtualizationServers
Backups
RuntimeOS Middleware
Security
Monitoring
Upgrades
Upgrades
Pivotal Platform
Automating infrastructure...
App
Monolith

13. ...and adopting microservices architecture...
Microservice
s
Networking Storage
VirtualizationServers
Backups
RuntimeOS Middleware
Security
Monitoring
Upgrades
Upgrades
Pivotal Platform

14. ...enables agile development
Microservice
s
Networking Storage
VirtualizationServers
Backups
RuntimeOS Middleware
Security
Monitoring
Upgrades
Upgrades
Pivotal Platform

15. Data is integral to digital transformation
Search App

16. Forward-looking Objectives
01. Minimize manual toil
02. Real-time updates
03. Personalized search results
Search App

17. Minimize manual toil for data
Move more workloads to the
platform
Reduce the manual overhead of
managing, upgrading, and
monitoring data services. Pivotal Platform

18. Pivotal Platform
Real-time updates to search results
Batch process → Event streaming
Continuously stream new search
data so in order to more quickly
add or remove products from the
website.

19. Pivotal Platform
Personalized search results
Use data to derive conclusions
Implement machine learning
algorithms to detect patterns and
provide personalized results to
Athletes.

20. Business Continuity and Multi-Cloud
Pivotal Platform Pivotal Platform Pivotal Platform

21. Unless otherwise indicated, these slides are © 2013-2019 Pivotal Software, Inc. and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Lessons Learned

22. Automate wherever possible, deploy fast and often, and go multi-cloud.
Lessons Learned

23. Automate wherever possible, deploy fast and often, and go multi-cloud.
Componentize your architecture to allow for iterative development.
Lessons Learned

24. Automate wherever possible, deploy fast and often, and go multi-cloud.
Componentize your architecture to allow for iterative development.
Rethinking your data strategy is vital to continue delivering customer value.
Lessons Learned

25. Stay
Connected.
#springone
DICK’S Sporting Goods
Jay Piskorik < @JayPiskorik>
Sabu Thomas < @sabuthomas01>
@s1p
Pivotal
Judy Wang <juwang@pivotal.io>