2x scalability boost for Shopify app

The client already had a version of the app for the multi-store synchronization with infrastructure built around on-prem servers with limited capacity and scaling options. Each surge of requests caused crashes and downtimes, which resulted in lost orders and money for the app's users. To prevent that in the future, Egnition decided to make their next version of the app Cloud-native.

With a small development team, the client needed to balance between solving pressing issues and following the product development roadmap. Since every crash required the team to drop everything and focus on the problem, application maintenance became costly. Moreover, planning any timelines for new feature development proved to be almost impossible.

Built exclusively for Shopify users, the Egnition product should adhere to all marketplace rules and requirements. They are designed to ensure that apps provide value to merchants, maintain security standards, and offer a good user experience. To make that 100% true, the client team needed some help.

Knowing that they wanted their next app version to be Cloud-native and exist within the AWS ecosystem, Egnition started to build it accordingly. By the time the OpsWorks team joined, they already had a solid tech stack and a chunk of code. We started by reviewing it to understand whether it is applicable to the Cloud at all.

Recognizing our client's unique struggles and needs, we set out to build a cloud infrastructure accordingly. We began by securing their network to keep private services private. Next, we implemented encrypted Amazon RDS for MySQL and Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to store customers' data securely. Historical data found a home in Amazon DocumentDB. To integrate their app seamlessly with Shopify, we used Amazon API Gateway. Finally, AWS Fargate allowed us to deploy their dockerized application with ease and scalability.

With the goal of synchronizing inventory and products across multiple stores in real-time, the Egnition team faced two main challenges: events from Shopify needed to be processed in a strictly ordered way, while the number of such transactions may be close to millions per minute. To overcome it, the client’s team developed a unique algorithm to solve the first obstacle, which allowed the OpsWorks team to configure the Amazon Simple Queue Service to handle the second one. This technology helped us to manage the high volume of requests efficiently, ensuring that the backend processes each query without overwhelming the system.