Remote Config and Beyond

How and why we use remote config?
How hotstar planned our rolling upgrade for our client app to reach 25 MN?
How new shiny rocky was built at hotstar?
How we roll out features at such a huge scale.
Introduction to hotstar config editor to world and talk about hotstar’s plans in future with remote config.

Transcript

1. Remote Config & Beyond!
2. Hello ! I am Ayushi Gupta Android Engineer at hotstar You can reach me out at: Twitter : @22guptaayushi Email : ayushig@hotstar.com
3. About Hotstar • #1 OTT platform in India • Over 350M+ downloads • 1 Day,100M users, 2.5X increase in concurrency • Available in >15 languages • Variety of content ◦ Live/On-Demand ◦ Sports/News/TV/Movies ◦ Regional Catalogue
4. Let’s talk about scale 2012 8M Felix Baumgartner’s Supersonic Jump YouTube 2018 3.1M NBC’s Super Bowl NBC Sports App 2018 10.3M IPL 2018 - Finals hotstar May 2019 18.6M IPL 2019 - Finals hotstar July 2019 25.3M World Cup - India vs New Zealand hotstar
5. Product Goals • AGILE Development • Many apps solving only one problem • Develop Seamless User Experience • Release features progressively • Keep App size low • Customer obsessed decisions on scale
6. Client journey to 25M
7. Legacy App : Not Agile • Releases were super slow (6 week cycle) ◦ At scale, feature release was risky ◦ More cautious development ◦ High validation time • Risk taking abilities • Too many hotfix rollouts • Monolithic legacy architecture
8. Engineering Requirements • High Risk - High Return at Scale • Minimise the blast zone • Move away from “Monolithic Legacy Architecture” • Improve engineering hygiene • Bring down engineering cost • Increase agility • Adopt new design guidelines! • Create smoother and seamless experience
9. Project ROCKY
10. Rewrite vs Refactor Rewrite Refactor • Modify existing working code. • May require longer time • Understand existing logic. • High engineering cost • No backward compatibility • More risky • Change features drastically. • Cleaner approach • Refer requirements • More testing
11. Scale Factor • 300 million devices to update • It’s not a backend ◦ Rollback needs time ◦ There is always residual users • Backup plan - A must have! There are still 0.5% users on our oldest version!
12. Building from scratch Legacy Module Rocky Module Intelligent Orchestral Layer ?
13. Building from scratch • “Don’t mess with something which is already Working” • Smart combination of rewrite & refactor • Define new architecture - MVVM • Feature by feature movement
14. Old Search • Simple, naive UI • Multi - step search • No smart option availability
15. User Preferred Search • New hypothesis • Implement new design • Can’t risk existing user experience. • New code from scratch
16. Quest for Config Management
17. Need of the hour User Targeting 2 Feature Gates Feature Gates 1 Scale 4 A/B Experiments 3
18. Rolling Upgrade • Release one feature at a time • A/B controlled updates • Measure feature key metrics • Measure user experience via funnels • Decision to switch to B!
19. Legacy Module Rocky Module
20. Remote Config to rescue • Change behaviour of app at runtime • Handles the caching by its own ! • Release gently and feature gating • Quirks:Propagate Remote Config updates in real time !
21. Preferred search results • Reduced searches • 6% faster search for User • Faster discovery of content • More Watch Time Old Search New Search Time No.of searched events
22. • Keep full support for older screens • Don’t break what is working • Adapting to changing backend Resiliency
23. Shiny rocky ! • Super modular • Highly agile app • Every week release cycles • Adaptive to fast moving changes • Every feature gated , releases • A/B experiments • Accident management
24. Beyond Remote Config...
25. Challenges with Remote Config • Huge numbers of keys at config • Many A/B experiments running simultaneously • Limit Access in Production • Optimise Developer Time • Different Builds for Different Product Requirements
26. Hotstar Config Editor • In app Config Editor • Enable only for DEBUG Builds • Key Name based Search
27. • Instant change • No server call • One build for all Hotstar Config Editor
28. We have some ideas!
29. Thank You !
30. Any questions ?