How Moneysupermarket Transformed

its Architecture with Microservices and

API Management

Pete Hanlon
1 Moneysupermarket Group CTO
 Who is Moneysupermarket Group?

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We saved people in the UK 2.1bn in 2018
 2013 we had seen rapid growth, but the
journey had come at a cost

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 Monolithic software
600 databases
SQL Server did everything
3 Physical data centres
Waterfall processes
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 100 people and 12 weeks
to change a logo!

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 We needed to go FASTER!

It was time to start again

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 We included everyone
7 “Archifest”
 We identified a high level of reusability
across the group.

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 Microservices was the approach we adopted
simple, loosely coupled, domain focused.

(But that alone doesn’t give you speed and flexibility)

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10
We chose the best tool for the job
 We automated everything.

(We rebuild over 1000 containers and servers a day)

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 We made the platform resilient

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 We reduced the risk of releases.

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 Improved Cycle Time More Stories Delivered
25.0
800
20.0

15.0
700
10.0

5.0
600

0.0
Jan-16 Feb-16 Mar-16 Apr-16 May-16 Jun-16 Jul-16 Aug-16 Sep-16 Oct-16 Nov-16
500

Less Defects 400

50
45 300
40
35
30 200
25
20
15
10 100
5
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
MSM Test Defects MSM Live Defects

14 We were starting to go faster

 We learned some things

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 Microservices are operationally complex,
teams *must* be on call for their services

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 Beware of unintended dependencies

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 Keep monitoring KPI’s simple
“requests”, “errors”, “latency”, “saturation”

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 Polycloud worked out best for us!
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 Microservices are not API’s
Microservices API

Small reusable Course grained leveraging

service, often chatty multiple microservices

Constantly iterating and Highly consistent and

evolving controlled

Stateless and simple, they

Strong Authentication and
don’t worry about
Authorization controls
authentication

Service level throttling

As fast as possible
based on activity
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 So we chose API Management
White labels
• Policy management
Services
• Request aggregation
• Versioning
Google Cloud Platform - Insight • Metrics
AI ML CRM
• Documentation

AWS - Group Platform

Service Service Service Service

Mobile App
Service Service Service Service

Service Service Service Service

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 2017 the platform was mature and powering the group

• Ability to release any time of the day

• Autoscaling to handle peak loads
• Velocity had significantly increased
• All systems had owners
• Services were highly reusable

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 Then Open Banking Happened

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 Running services for other companies
introduces new challenges.

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 Will it impact our velocity?
How will we test and learn?
How will we handle bespoke changes?

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 Encapsulate Change - Broker Pattern
Client Specific Mocks
Logic Test and learn

Microservices

3rd Party
Platform
3rd Party

Client
Broker

3rd Party
Broker
Service Service Service

Service Service Service

Platform

Broker
Mobile
Broker

Mobile

Mobile
Service Service

App
Service

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Slower change
Test and Learn flowFaster change
 We learned some more things

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 We needed API product management

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 Our API contracts leaked platform info
Apigee helped

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 Swagger documentation isn’t enough for
complex API’s

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 Finally

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 Don’t tie yourself to a single cloud provider
choose the best solution for the task.

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 Technology alone won’t make you faster
you need to concentrate on your people,
culture and ways of working.

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 An API Management solution is essential for a
Professional platform just don’t try to build one!

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 Thank you!

(Pete Hanlon on LinkedIn if you want to know more about our API’s)
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