How Massive Companies Use Node.js at Scale

Over the past few years, more large organizations have begun to publicly share how they've successfully used Node.js at scale.

In this article, I've collected some of my favorite resources and stories around large-scale Node.js applications - from the extremely cool (spacesuits at NASA) to the extremely global (Walmart), there are tons of inspiring Node.js success stories out there!

Capital One

Capital One is one of the largest FinTech companies in the U.S. right now, and they're going all-in on Node.js. They have thousands of developers working with Node.js on applications in production, using the OSS ecosystem that's grown up around Node.js and its tooling.

The Capital One story is pretty amazing, and I highly recommend you check out the official Node.js Foundation Case Study with Capital One. There's also a fantastic talk by Azat Mardan that dives further into how Capital One uses Node.js.

NASA

In my opinion, this is probably one of the coolest Node.js stories out there: NASA uses Node-powered spacesuits. After experiencing a hair-raising systems failure during a spacewalk, the team started looking into Node.js as a way to unify spacesuit systems data.

If you're interested in Node.js, space travel, or both, here's a talk from Collin Estes at EnterpriseJS in Austin:

Additionally, check out the Node.js Foundation case study with NASA to learn about how they use Node.js in their mission-critical (literally) deployments to help ensure success.

Walmart

Walmart is an interesting (and unexpected) user of Node.js. I was surprised to learn that so many of their e-commerce systems are powered by Node.js. At an organization the size of Walmart, these are systems that can see millions of users--and that's on a slow day! So as you can imagine, when Cyber Monday rolls around each year the team at Walmart needs something that can scale up effectively without breaking a sweat.

Alex Gregorian provided a great historical view at Nodevember last year; migrating a massive Java-based application stack to modern Node, with hundreds of developers and roughly a dozen applications. Also, there's (another) great Node.js case study with Walmart that has a ton of insight into their experience and success.

Enterprise Discussions With the Node.js Foundation

The Node.js Foundation has been doing an awesome series on the official YouTube around Node.js and the Enterprise. There are a ton of awesome episodes, but I wanted to share a few of the ones that I've found extremely impactful in understanding how Node.js works at scale.

• Node.js and Intel, an interview with Monica Ene-Pietrosanu, Engineering Director for the Datacenter Scripting Languages Team.
• Node.js and Twitter, an interview with James Bellenger, Senior Software Engineer, Nicolas Gallagher, Staff Software Engineer, and Ethan Schlienker, Engineering Manager.
• Node.js and Bustle, an interview with Steve Faulkner, Director of Engineering.
• Node.js and Lowes Digital, an interview with Rick Adams, Manager, IT Application Portfolio of Digital Interfaces.
• Node.js and Groupon, an interview with Adam Geitgey, Director, Software Engineering.
• Node.js and Netflix, an interview with Kim Trott, Director, UI Platform Engineering and Yunong Xiao, Platform Architect.

One Last Thing...

If you're interested in Node.js and the Enterprise, you should check out N|Solid - we've built N|Solid to address certain concerns of the enterprise around Node.js. Over the past few years, we've been building out N|Solid on active Node.js LTS release lines to help ensure that Enterprises get the best of Node.js while being able to remain secure and stable.

You should also keep up with the NodeSource Blog and check us out on Twitter at @NodeSource, where we actively share Node.js community and enterprise news.