"As we continue to break key functionality out of our monolith, we are opening up new possibilities for application components to integrate with other components and third-party applications. This would not have been possible for us before the introduction of Confluent Platform."
Steven Sermarini
Senior Enterprise Architect, SEI Investments
We launched a transformation initiative three years ago that transitioned SEI Investments from a monolithic database-oriented architecture to a containerized services platform with an event-driven architecture based on Confluent Platform.
SEI Investments has been a leader in the investment services industry for more than 50 years, helping professional wealth managers, institutional investors, and private investors create and manage wealth. In that time, we’ve established a reputation for comprehensive, innovative solutions that combine advice, investments, technology, and operations.
While we’re still relatively early in our event streaming journey, we are progressing rapidly on our path to maturity as an organization. We view this path as a series of phases, which we think of as days in our journey:
Day 1: Proof of concept and auditing of data events
Day 2: Streaming business events
Day 3: Integrated streaming and streaming data delivery
Today: Containerized services
To help others who are on a similar path apply new patterns and recognize opportunities for moving from the monolith to microservices, we would like to share some of the lessons learned and benefits we’ve already realized based on our experience.
Day 1: First steps with data events
We started our first proof-of-concept for event streaming in 2017. We wanted to start with a use case that provided real benefits but with a simple initial implementation. So, we set a straightforward goal: Use Apache Kafka