How BigCommerce Uses Data Streaming to Bring Real-Time Insights to Merchants

BigCommerce, a prominent e-commerce platform, transitioned from a Hadoop MapReduce-based system to Confluent Cloud on Google Cloud to enhance its real-time data processing capabilities and reduce operational overhead. Initially relying on self-managed Kafka clusters for ad hoc analyses, BigCommerce faced challenges with batch processing delays and maintenance burdens that hindered their ability to provide real-time analytics to merchants. The move to Confluent Cloud offered a cloud-agnostic, managed solution that allowed BigCommerce to seamlessly handle massive data volumes, such as during Black Friday/Cyber Monday spikes, without downtime or manual interventions. This migration enabled the company to deliver real-time insights into store performance and customer trends, significantly improving decision-making processes for merchants. By leveraging Confluent's pre-built connectors and expertise in Kafka, BigCommerce achieved a scalable, resilient, and cost-effective analytics infrastructure, freeing up their engineering team to focus on developing innovative features and enhancing the platform's functionality.