Background

When it comes to delivering pizza, speed and efficiency are just as important in the kitchen as they are in the digital world. For Domino’s Pizza UK, ensuring a seamless online ordering experience is the top priority. However, their legacy monolithic architecture made it difficult to keep up with growing customer demands and rapid market shifts. To address these challenges, Domino’s embarked on an 18-month digital transformation journey with Solo.io, leveraging Gloo Mesh and Gloo Gateway to modernize their platform and e-commerce experience.

Challenge

Domino’s existing monolithic system, while powerful, posed significant limitations. Scalability and maintenance became increasingly difficult, making it cumbersome to adapt to changing needs. Deployment cycles were slow, occurring only every two to three weeks, which hindered the ability to respond quickly to market changes. Additionally, innovation was stifled as the monolithic approach required long lead times for new feature development, often necessitating scheduled downtime. Domino's recognized these roadblocks and knew they needed a more flexible and dynamic solution to remain competitive.

Solution

To break free from its legacy constraints, Domino’s partnered with Solo.io to implement a modern, microservices-driven approach. The first step was migrating to microservices using Gloo Gateway, allowing the company to create a modular and scalable system. This transition enabled greater flexibility in their technology stack, making developing and deploying new features easier and with much more agility.

“We benefited from a highly effective Solo support team on Slack. Whenever issues arose, it was invaluable to have the team available, allowing us to collaboratively and promptly solve the problems” Platform Lead at Domino’s UK.

With Gloo Mesh, Domino’s could ensure that their microservices communicated reliably and securely with the implementation of service boundaries and workspaces designed to improve site reliability and enhanced engineering workflows. Features such as timeouts, circuit breakers, and retries provided robust service-to-service communication that helped to reduce the risk of failures. The shift to microservices also allowed Domino’s to embrace continuous deployment, reducing their deployment cycles from weeks to days and eliminating downtime constraints.

Results

The adoption of Gloo Mesh and Gloo Gateway delivered transformative results for Domino’s. Teams now operate with greater autonomy, enabling innovation and improving response times to customer requests and needs. The modernization effort not only accelerated feature development but also ensured the stability of their platform. Despite the increased pace of innovation, the reliable communication framework has helped maintain system performance and minimized disruptions to the platform.

The new architecture also fostered better collaboration between feature development and platform teams. By working in parallel without disrupting each other’s workflows, teams introduced new capabilities with greater efficiency. This cohesive approach created an environment where innovation and operational excellence could thrive simultaneously.

Next Steps

With a modernized e-commerce platform, Domino’s UK is now well-positioned for continuous innovation. Their new architecture allows them to integrate emerging technologies effortlessly, roll out seasonal promotions with ease, and optimize operations for future growth. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Domino’s remains committed to refining its online experience and leveraging cutting-edge solutions to meet customer expectations.

As they continue their journey, Solo.io provides the foundation for long-term success in a fast-paced, customer-driven market. The collaboration between the two companies underscores the power of modern application networking in transforming businesses for the digital age.