COSCUP 2025

Abstract

In a world where agility, resilience, and scalability are no longer luxuries but essentials, cell-based architecture emerges as a forward-thinking solution rooted in open-source principles. This talk introduces the concept through an evolutionary lens—from monoliths to microservices, and finally to cells, the next logical step in distributed system design.

Unlike traditional microservices, cells are self-contained, independently deployable units that encapsulate both runtime and governance. This model enables enterprise platforms to scale efficiently while isolating failures and maintaining developer autonomy. We’ll explore how leading open-source implementations like WSO2’s Choreo have leveraged this architecture to enable multi-tenancy, service composition, and zero-trust security at scale.

This session is ideal for architects, DevOps engineers, and platform engineers interested in distributed systems, service mesh, or platform engineering. Prior knowledge of microservices or Kubernetes is recommended but not mandatory.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand how cell-based architecture improves on microservices for large-scale, multi-team systems.
• Learn about real-world adoption through open-source implementations like WSO2 Choreo.
• Explore how cell-based architecture fosters team autonomy, resilience, and cost optimization.
• Identify common adoption challenges and recommended patterns to overcome them.

Outline

1. Setting the Stage
   - The problem space: Modern enterprise challenges in scalability and governance

2. Architectural Evolution
   - From monoliths → microservices → cells
   - Open-source milestones influencing this transition

3. What is Cell-Based Architecture?
   - Definition, structure, and how cells differ from microservices
   - Self-governance, zero-trust by default, and team ownership

4. The Tech Behind the Cells
   - Communication (service mesh), discovery, policies
   - Open-source tools enabling cell-based platforms

5. WSO2 Choreo: A Real-World Case Study
   - How Choreo implements cells for multi-tenant PaaS
   - Developer workflows, scalability, and isolation

6. Challenges & Adoption Patterns
   - Common pitfalls in transitioning to cells
   - Recommended rollout strategies for existing systems

7. Conclusion & Open Q&A
   - Summary of benefits
   - Final questions from the audience

This 30-minute talk explores how we transformed the open-source Spring Authorization Server into an enterprise-grade Security Token Service (STS) capable of supporting millions of users. I'll share our practical journey from evaluation to production deployment, with a focus on the architectural decisions, customizations, and performance optimizations that made this possible. You'll learn how we identified and addressed performance bottlenecks, integrated with complex enterprise systems, and maintained security compliance while scaling horizontally. This case study demonstrates how open-source software can be extended to meet even the most demanding enterprise requirements without forking the codebase, allowing organizations to benefit from both community innovation and enterprise reliability.

Session Outline

• Introduction and context of our enterprise authentication challenges
• Our evaluation process and why we chose Spring Authorization Server
• Core customizations for enterprise requirements
• Scaling strategies and performance optimizations
• Production deployment, monitoring, and lessons learned

Key Takeaways

Attendees will learn:
- A practical framework for evaluating open-source security projects for enterprise use
- Specific performance optimizations that allowed Spring Authorization Server to scale to millions of users
- Techniques for extending and customizing Spring Authorization Server without forking the codebase
- Strategies for integrating modern OAuth 2.0/OIDC systems with enterprise applications
- Lessons learned from our production deployment and monitoring approach