By Avtar Raikmo
Avtar Raikmo started his career as a developer of Java, Python, C# and C++ solutions before becoming a senior leader at Goldman Sachs, Morningstar and, subsequently Meta (Facebook). Today, he is still just as passionate about technology and motivated by large-scale data challenges, as well as raising two children. Based in the UK, his current position is the Head of Engineering for Hazelcast Platform.
View all blogs by the authorDec 11, 2024
Recap: Hazelcast, Santander, and London Java Community Holiday Meetup
What better way to close the year – and in style – than with the London Java Community at Uncommon, Liverpool Street! The evening was filled with meaningful conversations, technical insights, and festive cheer as developers and architects explored the latest in distributed systems and fault-tolerant architectures.
Exclusive Insights from Santander
One of the evening’s standout moments was a keynote by Humphrey Fu, engineering lead at Santander. He shared how Hazelcast Platform evolved from a caching solution into a core component of Santander’s FX platform. What began as a straightforward answer for a single requirement now supports multiple use cases from messaging, compute grids, and static data distribution across Santander’s infrastructure. Humphrey highlighted key challenges, milestones, and critical decisions that shaped this transformation. His hands-on experience offered a rare, practitioner-focused perspective on scaling Hazelcast Platform within one of the world’s most complex financial environments.
His insights are a masterclass in adopting resilient, scalable solutions within large enterprises. Enjoy the video.
Building Fault-Tolerant Java Applications with Hazelcast
Hazelcast’s senior engineering manager, Ed Thurman, followed up with a session on handling failures at scale. As distributed systems grow in complexity, failures are inevitable, but designing for resilience doesn’t have to mean sacrificing performance. Attendees learned about fault tolerance strategies using the Hazelcast Platform, including:
- Replication and partitioning for high availability
- Backups and anti-entropy protocols to ensure data consistency
- Practical techniques for building failure-resistant Java applications
The session provided actionable insights for leveraging Hazelcast Platform’s architecture to design robust systems that maintain availability and performance, even in failure scenarios.
Festive Fun & Community Connections
No holiday meetup is complete without some festive fun! We celebrated with seasonal treats, drinks, and a raffle that brought big smiles to our winners. It was fantastic to see members of the community in-person, asking questions and sharing their experiences with Hazelcast Platform.
Missed out on attending the meet-up? We get it—FOMO is real, which is why you can watch the recording from the comfort of your home. Watch Now.
Stay connected with Hazelcast and join our Community Slack to continue the discussion.
Explore More Resources
Thank you for being a part of this unforgettable event. Your engagement and feedback are invaluable, and we look forward to seeing you at our future meetups. Until then, happy coding and happy holidays!
