Service Mesh – a must have for a dynamic infrastructure

Introduction Weaving a Service Mesh for Multiple Clusters at bol.com – that was the title for the presentation our guests gave during the virtual KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2020 earlier this year. This triggered our curiosity. We have questions like what is this service mesh about? Why do we need it? How did we implement it? Guests Remco Overdijk; Tech Lead Provisioning Fleet / Expert System Engineer at bol.com. You might know him from the episode where we spoke about Kubernetes. James Brook; Cloud Solutions Architect at Google Hosts Peter Brouwers…

How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 4-12-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Autonomy cloud Infrastructure R2D2

How we tame Google Cloud resources with R2D2. We had some episodes on the cloud already. Now it’s time to discuss how bol.com combines the promises of the cloud and their requirements for Reproducibility and Reliability. For instance, balance infinite resources and ultimate autonomy with security. Within bol.com we developed R2D2. R2D2 stands for our Reproducible Resource Deployment Definition tool which combines the functions of Terraform, Cloud SDK and Puppet Labs. It helps us to ensure Recovery, Security, Self-service, Stability and Scalability in our move to the cloud. The reason…

Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 26-09-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Architecture Scalability cloud Podcast redesign

We think “the Cloud” is to broad a subject to handle in one episode of the podcast. That is why we break down our cloud journey in small pieces and go over them in separate episodes. This time we dive into “Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling”. In an earlier episode we discussed how we moved our Big Data to the Cloud, in the Cloud as an enabler to becoming more data-driven. When moving applications and services to the Cloud we think about redesigning them, like in this case…

Redesign for the cloud – horizontal scaling

Cloud as Enabler to become more data driven

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 7-08-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience cloud Podcast Business Intelligence

Cloud as Enabler to become more data-driven. The adjective data-driven means that progress in an activity is compelled by data, rather than by intuition, personal experience or a gut feeling. Googling data-driven gives you over 637 mln. results so time to add an extra result to this with this episode. But we wanted to make it more specific. We moved our big data into the cloud and we got some nice insights that we wanted to share. We asked our two guests of this episode to do so. It turned…

‘OK Google…..’ – the future of voice is here

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 31-07-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: cloud Podcast Interaction Design Voice Google

‘OK Google…..’ – the future of voice is here. Everybody with a Google Assistant on their phone or with Google Speakers installed uses this command more and more. It’s even used by radio DJ’s to make fun and just shout out commands to see what’s happening. And you know when people start making jokes with it, it’s becoming a success. There is a future for interaction by voice. Time to talk about this success with our two guests who were part of the team that introduced the future of voice…

Performance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouse

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 29-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: cloud Algorithms Warehouse scaling performance flexibility

In this episode we dive into the world were e-commerce becomes physical. We talk about the bol.com Fulfilment Center (BFC). Within these centres, we have several challenges and one of these challenges has to do with the picking algorithm. The pick algorithm determines the route in a warehouse that is performed to pick all the products for a set of customers. As bol.com we have very high volumes of products that we must send from our warehouses to customers every day. So, it makes sense to optimize the distance that…

Performance boost the pick algorithm in the warehouse

Meetup: René Feiner (MessageBird) & Maarten Dirkse (bol.com) – Migrating to the cloud

Leon van Tegelen, on 9-05-2019
Category: Cloud, Development, Events Tags: Meetup Event cloud Migration

On Wednesday the 15th of May bol.com will host a meetup about migrating from on-prem to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). After dinner is served, René Feiner, director of engineering at MessageBird will kick off the evening and talk about how and why they moved from their datacenter to GCP. Then, after a short break, Maarten Dirkse, cloud advocate at bol.com, will discuss bol.com’s ongoing migration to GCP and what lessons they have learned along the way. So if you’re interested in why companies migrate to the cloud and how…

From zero to PRO: Using GO @ bol.com

Peter Brouwers, on 7-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Open source Golang go Development cloud software engineering Podcast

In this episode we talk about GO. Go is not a language that is used the most at bol.com. That’s is Java, together with Kotlin. In 2014 it was introduced for the first time and reached a steady but not so big user group. Recently, along with the move to the cloud, we experience a second wave of adoption. When you listen to the stories our two enthusiastic guests share in this episode, you might even believe Go is the future. Guests Rogier Lommers Tom Stoepker Hosts Peter Brouwers Peter…

Meetup: Maarten Dirkse & Tariq Ettaji – CI/CD @ bol.com & Xebia

Sjors van Berkel, on 16-01-2019
Category: Cloud, Events Tags: Meetup Event cloud CI/CD

During this meetup we will focus on modern CI/CD practices! Maarten Dirkse, cloud advocate at bol.com, will update us on the migration of bol.com from their in-house data center to the cloud. After a short break, we will continue with the next part of the evening, in which Tariq Ettaji will show us how to run a CI/CD stack using CloudFormation completely free of charge!

Part 1: Talks Spaces Summit v2.0

Sjors van Berkel, on 8-07-2018
Category: Blog, Architecture, Culture, Cloud, Development Tags: Event cloud

Last June, Spaces Summit was organized by and for bol.com employees. At Techlab, we want to celebrate this event by highlighting two presentations every month. This month, we will look at the challenges of moving our server infrastructure to the cloud, and, also important, how to use the cloud for pouring cold beer. Talk #1: Going to the cloud: Forget EVERYTHING you know! Speaker: Maarten Dirkse Genre: Way of working Slides Abstract: bol.com is moving to the cloud. When you’re doing so, what should you care about? Can you handle the…

Software Circus Interview – The move to the public cloud

Maarten Dirkse, on 13-09-2017
Category: Architecture, Culture, Cloud, Development Tags: Event Architecture Software Cloudbusting cloud

IT infrastructure transitions can be hard. Obviously there are technical challenges to overcome. But what do you do when internal disagreement about the way forward leads to a halt in innovation?