The Business State of Node.js 2015

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good morning, my name is Joe McCann and I work at NodeSource. My presentation was originally titled The Business Case for Node. However, I changed it up just slight because the Business State of Node is actually much more comprehensive than the Business Case itself. To set the stage, I’d like to tell you a story, starting off with a rather obvious Node.js reference…
• #3: Mark Cuban. Yes, Mark Cuban. Please, allow me to explain. Back in 2010, I went and watched a live debate between Mark Cuban and Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee at SXSW. If you recall correctly, Boxee was a company attempting to create a product that was the first true hardware and software based attempt at providing an alternative to watching television by streaming content and programming exclusively from the internet. Boxes helped instantiate the concept of “cord cutting”, or ending your relationship with you cable provider and getting content elsewhere. The debate was heated to say the least with Mark proclaiming…
• #4: This a la carte model is for morons. He vehemently believed that an a la carte model would never work! At the time I was a fan of Boxee but it still had a number of issues facing it as a true alternative to cable television. However, I was convinced that technologists would find a way and at that time the Boxee team was trying to make it work. Since then, I've become an adamant "cord cutter". Why? Cable companies bundle together loads of content I’ve never wanted and use the bundle as a means to charge me more money. However...Cable companies are now experiencing the pain of unbundling; Consumers actually want a la carte content options!
• #5: As if a defiant consortium of companies were listening to Mark, many a la carte content creators and providers are now serving genuinely a la carte options ranging from purchasing individual shows to even a monthly subscription for content. Moreover, content providers like Netflix and Amazon are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into bespoke content that isn't available on television and it’s working extremely well. If anyone has binge-watched House of Cards on Netflix, you know what I mean. But don’t take simply take my word for it. Have a look at the data!
• #6: For the first time ever we are at a true inflection point in terms of cable television subscribers relative to internet service subscribers. 2015 will be the year where we see for the first time ever a material delta between the number of cable service subscribers and internet service subscribers. What’s most important here is the declining number of cable subscribers. This is painful to watch if you are any of the cable providers. So it appears the data is actually on the side of folks wanting a la carte content options!
• #7: Look, I’m not up here taking cheapshots at Mark. Okay maybe I am with this one photo. But in all honesty, he’s an incredibly smart and obviously successful person, but the belief he had 5 years ago I, and apparently millions of other people believed, was incorrect and we’ve ultimately voted with our feet. The bundling method that cable providers had consumers locked into has begun to show serious signs of decay. Yet this unbundling idea is not unique to cable providers — it is happening in tech as well.
• #8: At a macro level, we are in the early innings of a great unbundling taking place with technology companies.
• #9: Symantec recently announced they are splitting into two public companies. EBay and PayPal are amicably parting ways. Dell recently went private to be more nimble and aggressive. HP is dividing into two separate public companies and last but not least Mr. Ellison is stepping down as CEO and has unbundled the CEO role by electing two co-CEOs to run Oracle. The important thing to note here is how the unbundling sentiment at a macro level, whether it be for television programming or IT companies themselves, is starting to influence unbundling at even more granular levels.
• #10: For example, IT organizations themselves, specifically at some of the companies I just mentioned, are seeing an unbundling happen as well. Teams are moving toward, smaller and more nimbler approaches to developing and shipping software and there a number of reasons for this transition, the first of which is none other than technical debt.
• #11: Technical debt: the topic no one likes. We all have it. We’ve all contributed to it. And I’m willing to bet, almost all of us have had to deal with dealing with it. However, for large IT orgs that have been around for greater than 10 years, technical debt is no longer some obligation they can kick down the road any further — it is actually impacting their core business. From the clients with whom we’ve worked and prospects with whom we’ve spoken, it is not uncommon to hear of multimillion line applications that have more debt than the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. This has a hangover effect on teams’ abilities to move quickly and ultimately innovate. Ask yourself this question: If I had the chance to go work on a 12 year old Java app with millions of lines of code, would I jump at the opportunity? Most of us will answer a resounding “No” but the reality is this is the reality for many companies using and relying on legacy technologies like Java and .Net. The war for talent in tech is showing no signs of ending soon so being burdened with technical debt can impede progress in a company’s hiring and retention plan. Finally, the innovators dilemma is very real for companies of the size and scale as I previously mentioned. Their unbundling is not meant to simply appease shareholders, but is a hedge against the inertia associated with large orgs and their inability to innovate. The main cause of most technical debt? The monolith!
• #12: Well, today as I channel my inner-Zarathustra, I’m hear to proclaim that the monolith is officially dead. For many years, the bundled option from technology vendors consisting of hardware and software, or even simply bundled software packages is finally starting to break up. Companies are moving in droves toward cloud-based solutions and service oriented architectures (SOA), employing micro-services and handpicking technologies to solve specific problems. The monolith is littered with problems from enabling technical debt to disabling innovation and even impacting the ability to hire and retain talent. I can assure you, the companies on the right side of this argument are the ones not only staying relevant but are innovating as well. And what technology are these companies choosing to unbundle the monolith? Node.js of course. The most effective patterns for writing node apps are in an unbundled manner— think microservices, small apps, modules, etc.
• #13: Now, on the other side of unbundling are the startups. These companies tend not to be mired with years of technical debt, bureaucracy and legacy tech requirements. Instead, they are empowered and required, mainly by their investors, to move quickly and use technologies that enable them to do just that thus building systems in a way that enables other developers to ramp up quickly while also being able to rapidly innovate. Many companies are choosing Node.js as either the sole technology or as an additional tool in the toolbox.
• #14: The unbundling of tech companies and the breaking down of the monolith is leading towards an even strong transformation that is taking place in IT organizations overall. The sentiment of “change being in the air” is very strong and coincides nicely with some other events that are stimulating change.
• #15: Like server upgrades! Why are on Earth are the growth in server upgrades important? Well 2015 is set out to be a big year for companies to upgrade their servers but in addition to this, many are re-architecting entire systems. I had a conversation last month with one of the world’s largest label manufacturers for brands and they are completing re-architecting their packaging and label making business with modern tech. The Sentiment inside IT orgs is transformation is a means of survival not simply exploratory. Why?
• #16: Because every company nowadays, in every vertical is in fact, a technology company. Think about it. A company who makes labels for shoe boxes is moving towards a “smart label” — internet of things smart. Transportation and shipping businesses are moving towards realtime systems. Construction and healthcare, even retailers are all technology companies. And for them they need to be able to move fast.
• #17: PayPal knows the importance of speed all too well. As an early believer of Node.js at scale and, a participant of the macro unbundling trend with it’s split with Ebay, PayPal down at the IT org level scaled from 1 node.js application to 40 in 12 months. This phenomenal growth is a combination of focused leadership and the benefits of node.js and the node ecosystem from the incredibly active and responsive community of developers to the massive leverage the npm public registry gives businesses to build apps faster. Now there was obviously more than just Node and its speed to build those 40 apps.
• #18: PayPal has also been able to attract even more talent in 2014 hiring more than 400 JavaScript developers alone. I can assure you, these engineers weren’t hired to pare down technical debt! The fact that Node.js was part of their offering to would-be engineers, certainly persuaded many folks to come on board. Node being a differentiator for hiring is still very relevant now as it was for all of 2014.
• #19: But let’s talk about node and real business and when I say business, I mean money. Every year in the States and even the UK, there is Black Friday, a day when consumers flock to stores and online retailers for deep discounts and deals on products. For anyone with an ecommerce business, this is the Super Bowl. And no one knows this better than walmart.
• #20: Yes, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has a massive ecommerce business as well. And on their busiest day of the year, what technology did they choose? Node.js of course. All web traffic was handled by node.js servers this year. A rather big bet, eh? How many minutes of downtime did they experience from the flood of shopper traffic?
• #21: Zero. That’s right, the world’s largest retailer made a huge strategic bet on Node.js for its busiest day of the year and they experienced zero downtime. The node teams were actually bored that day…again. Last year they did something similar and had the same result but this year they sent all traffic to node servers as opposed to only half in 2013. Sadly, zero downtime wasn’t the case for other companies…
• #22: Every single one of these companies experienced some downtime on Black Friday. In many cases, hours of downtime. Years ago, it was considered a sign of success to have so much traffic that it crashed your servers. Nowadays, it is not only completely unacceptable to not only users, but shareholders as well. How many millions of dollars of revenue were lost on Black Friday for these companies?If node.js is good enough for the world’s largest retailer is it not good enough for these?
• #23: So given how we’ve seen at a macro level, the unbundling happening and the transformation taking shape inside IT organizations I want to leave you with one thing to consider. Is your monolithic stack going to be able to compete with the many micro services-based companies of the future?
• #24: Sometimes, the task of convincing your boss, or your boss’s boss, the CTO or CIO of your organization the value in breaking down the monolith, moving toward a service oriented architecture and plugging in Node where it makes sense, can seem like an uphill battle. But it shouldn’t be. There are companies like NodeSource and npm Incorporated that can help amplify your voice and squander the FUD around Node and if it is ready for production or not. Let us help you further push the adoption of Node in the enterprise.