• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

EBay helps drive new style of data engineering

May 6, 2016   BI News and Info

Among those in the forefront of the invention of e-commerce is eBay Inc. While sometimes overshadowed by others, the company has helped forge a new generation of distributed data processing tools, at the same time become an important proponent of open source software. Its engineers have participated in Apache Hadoop and Spark projects, and the company has contributed its own projects to open source, including the Apache Kylin multidimensional analytics engine.

To find out more, SearchDataManagement spoke recently with Debashis Saha, vice president of commerce platform infrastructure at eBay, who leads a talented cadre dedicated to data engineering. He said Kylin is undergoing some changes, as eBay adds Spark to an arsenal once based more around the MapReduce data framework. He also tells us that e-commerce sites are undergoing a big shift from search-orientation to recommendation-driven designs. Below are edited excerpts of Saha’s conversation.

How does use of open source software for data engineering relate to the overall philosophy of eBay?

 EBay helps drive new style of data engineeringDebashis Saha

Debashis Saha: EBay was founded to create more opportunity for everyone. We wanted to take that spirit to the way we did everything. The technology team here has a culture that is focused on how technology can be used to create more openness and opportunity. So we place a priority on open source for its importance to both the tech community and our own business.

We feel we are empowering our engineers by allowing them to be the decision makers in how eBay.com is built, and in turn, their contributions to open source are helping to accelerate and grow the tech ecosystem. Open source has become an important part of our DNA.

What is the purpose of Kylin? Can you place it in a business context for our readers?

Saha: Using Kylin, the team has been able to use real-time data to capture trends and insights about what shoppers are looking for on eBay. We have over 800 million items listed on eBay, and we’re able to dig into the data and ensure we’re marketing and surfacing the right products for our buyers. In addition, our insights also help our sellers make better decisions about what inventory the eBay shopper is interested in.

For example, with the Super Bowl, we looked at transactions and saw how merchandise for the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos compared and which items were hot sellers. More recently, we developed an [NCAA basketball] March Madness themed bracket using eBay data. Using Kylin, we were able to quickly determine the most-popular teams in the country from the opening of the college hoops season through March 6th.

How do you view your use of MapReduce in relation to Kylin — is it fair to say there is a migration underway to more use of Spark with Kylin?

EBay was founded to create more opportunity for everyone. We wanted to take that spirit to the way we did everything. Debashis Sahavice president of commerce platform infrastructure, eBay

Saha: Yes, we have already implemented a Spark-based cube building engine in our 2.0 code base and this will be the default engine in Kylin 2.0. Another important area where Spark has an impact would be streaming integration. We are actively looking at Spark as the stream processing engine for near-real-time updates of the Kylin cubes.

Can you describe the shift you have seen from a search-oriented e-commerce platform to one that is more “real time,” less batch-oriented, incorporating predictive and cognitive analytics?

Saha: There is a deluge of data, and e-commerce is leveraging it in a way that provides more relevant and personalized options for customers. At eBay, we’re reinventing our data platform efforts to make it even easier to find things, compare items and surface exactly what customers need. We’ve embarked on a mission to structure our unstructured data that will allow eBay to be an open-sourced catalog with unique identifiers. Using state-of-the-art machine learning tools, we’re organizing, categorizing and surfacing more searchable product pages in real time.

Tools like Kylin are making it easier for businesses to bridge the gap between the data and its business implications. This year, eBay started a business war room to look at the incoming metrics on its platform in real time so [analysts] may react to any shifts immediately. We have a team that can see what shoppers are looking to buy and determine where to quickly source and integrate this inventory in commerce ecosystem. Results can be surprising. During Valentine’s Day, our data found that more shoppers were looking to antique and vintage styles of engagement rings, so we were able to quickly surface this merchandise to our buyers.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)


SearchBusinessAnalytics: BI, CPM and analytics news, tips and resources

data, Drive, eBay, Engineering, helps, Style
  • Recent Posts

    • Ba’al comes to CPAC, Ted Cruz jokes about his Cancun trip
    • Optimizing data migration/integration with Power Platform
    • AI Weekly: Biden calls for $37 billion to address chip shortage
    • NOT WHAT THEY MEANT BY “BUILDING ON THE BACKS OF….”
    • Why Healthcare Needs New Data and Analytics Solutions Before the Next Pandemic
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited