Evolution of Vivo Official Mall: From Monolithic to Service‑Oriented Architecture and Globalization

This article describes the architectural evolution of the Vivo official online mall, tracing its transformation from a monolithic application to a comprehensive, service‑oriented e‑commerce platform.

1. Introduction Vivo’s official mall started as an outsourced project based on the open‑source ECStore (PHP) and later grew into a self‑developed system. The article aims to share the architectural lessons learned during this evolution.

2. Architecture Evolution

2.1 Mall v1.0 – Monolithic Phase In May 2015 the reconstruction began. By January 2016 a Java‑based monolithic system (v1.0) was launched, using a classic MVC framework and MySQL/Redis for persistence. The system was divided into logical layers:

Presentation Layer – handles UI rendering.

Service Layer – business logic between presentation and data.

Data Layer – MySQL and Redis storage.

Advantages: simple architecture, fast iteration, performance at least two orders of magnitude higher than the previous ECStore.

Limitations: poor performance under high traffic, low development efficiency, and reliance on external code.

Caption: Figure 2.1 – Mall v1.0 system architecture.

2.2 Mall v2.0 – Service‑Oriented Phase Rapid growth of Vivo devices and user traffic exposed the monolith’s bottlenecks. A Service‑Oriented Architecture (SOA) was adopted, physically separating core domains into independent services:

Activity system

Product system

Coupon system

Order system

Each subsystem was refactored to address specific pain points such as performance, data volume, and coupling with the main site.

Caption: Figure 2.2 – Mall v2.0 system architecture.

Key improvements:

Activity system became independent in Aug 2017, handling promotions, launches, and lotteries.

Product system was split to support full‑category management, multi‑store/brand dimensions, and higher query performance.

Coupon system introduced a unified coupon capability, scaling to massive issuance volumes.

Order system adopted Elasticsearch and Sharding‑JDBC, boosting storage and concurrency by more than tenfold.

2.3 Mall v3.0 – Business System Expansion To accommodate new business models, three additional subsystems were added:

Consignment system – bridges external platform products with Vivo’s catalog.

CPS system – a commission‑based promotion platform for influencers and partners.

Promotion system – a dedicated marketing engine handling complex activity workflows.

Caption: Figure 2.3 – Mall v3.0 system architecture.

3. Internationalization To enter overseas markets (India, Thailand, etc.), Vivo built a global solution covering:

Multi‑language content management system.

Multi‑timezone common components.

Multi‑country isolation framework.

Multi‑region deployment and domain routing.

Caption: Figure 3.1 – Multi‑language content center.

Caption: Figure 3.2 – Multi‑timezone component.

Caption: Figure 3.3 – Multi‑country isolation framework.

The article concludes that the presented architecture is only a high‑level overview; deeper technical details will be covered in future series.