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Scaling Cloud and Distributed Applications: Lessons and Strategies From chase.com, #1 Banking Portal in the US
This presentation by Durai Arasan focuses on strategies and best practices for scaling cloud and distributed applications, as demonstrated through the cloud transformation of Chase.com, a leading banking portal in the US.
Key Goals and Strategies:
- Efficient Scaling: Understanding customer patterns and leveraging elastic scaling, while managing costs and capacity.
- Resilience: Preparing for failures with circuit breakers and maintaining system availability even when components fail.
- Performance: Improving application performance through edge computing and traffic shaping.
Technological Approaches:
- Multi-region Architecture: Segmentation to handle zonal failures and minimize the impact on users.
- High-performance Automation: Eliminating manual errors through automated infrastructure repaving and failover routines.
- Observability: Implementing effective monitoring to ensure system stability and facilitate automated responses.
Cultural Shifts:
- Adapting to cloud-centric operations and fostering a mindset that embraces automation and proactive failure management.
- Developing an abstraction layer for seamless integration and scalability across multiple cloud environments.
These strategies and lessons aim to provide insights for enhancing the reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency of cloud applications, addressing both expected and unforeseen challenges.
This is the end of the AI-generated content.
As businesses increasingly rely on cloud applications, efficient scaling becomes essential. This talk presents real-world strategies from Chase.com's cloud transformation, showcasing effective approaches to building resilient and high-performing systems.
We will address key challenges such as managing heavy loads and ensuring seamless failover, while sharing best practices like multi-cloud design, microservices adoption, and automation. Additionally, we'll explore the cultural shift necessary for successful cloud scalability.
Whether you're optimizing existing systems or building new ones, you'll gain practical insights to enhance reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency. Join us to transform cloud challenges into opportunities for growth.
Chase.com, the #1 banking portal in the United States, is a comprehensive online platform that empowers customers to make payments, manage their finances, and access a wide range of banking and financial services for individuals, businesses, and institutions.
Speaker

Durai Arasan
Head of Architecture for Chase.com @JP Morgan Chase, Previously Chief Architect @ETRADE Financial, With 28+ Years of Experience Building Critical Platforms and Solving Complex Tech Challenges
Durai Arasan is the Managing Director and Head of Architecture for Chase.com at JP Morgan Chase. In this role, he leads transformative strategies to elevate customer experiences, drives digital innovation, accelerates cloud adoption, and advances modern application platform architecture—ensuring Chase.com remains a premier financial portal.
A key achievement in his tenure at JP Morgan Chase has been leading Chase.com’s cloud transformation, enabling scalable, resilient, and high-performance digital experiences for millions of customers. Under his leadership, the organization has modernized its architecture, embracing cloud-native technologies to enhance agility, reliability, and operational efficiency at scale.
Previously, Durai served as the Chief Architect at ETRADE Financial, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s technology landscape. He spearheaded the development of a high-performance trading platform leveraging a message-based framework—recognized and featured at Spring One conferences. In addition to this, he led the design and implementation of foundational platforms and frameworks that powered ETRADE’s entire suite of applications.
With deep expertise in distributed cloud computing, Durai is renowned for architecting cutting-edge, high-performance platforms that scale seamlessly across large enterprises. His passion for innovation continues to drive advancements in modern cloud architectures and digital transformation strategies.
Durai holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University and a Certification in Business and Technology Management from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he enjoys traveling the world and capturing breathtaking landscapes as an avid photographer.