How eBay Now (Shutl) delivers even faster using Neo4j, the Graph Database

London startup Shutl, recently acquired by eBay, revolutionized e-commerce delivery by using the Neo4j graph database to coordinate same-day deliveries. Volker Pacher, Senior Developer on the Shutl team, famously likes to say, "We run our business on seven lines of Cypher!"

Now helping power eBay Now's local delivery, Volker and his colleague Sam Phillips, Head of Engineering for the Local Delivery team at eBay, are flying across the pond to present to our SF Bay Area GraphDB meetup group.

Join us for an exciting session at eBay HQ as we learn how Shutl optimized their delivery network and process using Neo4j!

Please arrive before 6:30 as eBay security will not be able to allow attendees into the building after 6:45

AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:30 - Networking

6:30 - 7:30 - How Shutl delivers even faster using Neo4j, the Graph Database

7:30 - 8:00 - Q&A

8:00 - 8:30 - More networking

ABSTRACT: How Shutl delivers even faster using Neo4j, the Graph Database
Shutl is the London startup that's revolutionizing e-commerce delivery. We connect a fragmented same-day carrier network to national retailers, allowing them to offer delivery in minutes, not days. 2013 saw Shutl launching in the US, and in November we were acquired by eBay, working as the logistics team within eBay Local.The first version of our product was built on top of a traditional relational database and as we grew, the cracks started to show - our physical deliveries were often quicker than our database queries! We replatformed and placed Neo4j, a graph database, at the core of our system. In this talk, we touch on the key differences between relational databases and graph databases (which, ironically, are much more relational!), and discuss in detail how we utilise this technology both to model our complex domain but also to gain insights into our data and continually improve our offering.

In 2014 our story continues as we expand to 30 cities in the US, launch with major retailers on both sides of the ocean and continually make same-day delivery more accessible with better availability and lower prices. Product advances, Neo4j and graph databases are the backbone of everything we're doing.

SPEAKERS: Sam Phillips, Head of Engineering, Local Delivery at eBay

Sam is Head of Engineering for eBay's Local Delivery team, bringing super fast delivery to customers in the UK and US. He is an XP practitioner, project manager and engineering team leader, and his background is in e-commerce and logistics startups. Amongst his previous roles he ran operations projects for The Hut Group, one of the UK's largest online retailers, and was developer #1 for online travel success story On The Beach Travel, where he was the lead developer for five years.

He was part of the acquisition and integration team for eBay's 2013 purchase of Shutl, and in addition to his work at eBay Sam is working with a variety of developer tools startups in both engineering and advisory roles.

Twitter: @samsworldofno (https://twitter.com/samsworldofno)

Volker Pacher, Senior Developer, eBay

Volker is a Senior Developer at eBay Local Delivery. Before its acquisition by eBay, he was a member of the core team at Shutl helping to transition from a monolithic application to SOA and introducing new technologies, among them Neo4j. Volker is passionate about agile methodologies and developing well designed and maintainable applications.

Outside of work he can be found riding his downhill mountain bike in exotic locations or working on open source projects.

Twitter: @vpacher (https://twitter.com/vpacher)