SAAS Applications' Scalability Challenges – Is there hope?

Picking from where we left, the second part of the two-part series on scalability challenges takes a birds eye view of the factors that affect scalability.

How to tackle scalability?

Facing scalability challenge is a good sign, since it's indicative of increased traffic. However, if the organization does not address the issue in a timely and appropriate manner, the dream can easily turn into a nightmare. As a part of its ScaleAssured? offering, Cloudaccel analyzes the scalability challenge by breaking it down into two broad set of factors: Technology and Process.

TECHNOLOGY FACTORS

A myriad of technology factors play a role in applications scalability. Below is an attempt to capture the view from thirty thousand feet:

PROCESS FACTORS

As much as technology plays a dominant role in scalability challenges, processes play an equally crucial role in drastically reducing :

• the reaction time
• the probability of introducing scalability challenges

Structured processes can help Organizations in

• addressing scalability challenges, when faced, in shortest time, and
• treating scalability as an ongoing requirement, during all crucial phases of system development

Below is a similar effort to summarize processes:

In addition to technology and process factors, human factor plays a crucial role. Attention needs to be paid in orchestrating coordination among domain-specific experts like cloud architects, web architects,?network and system admins, DBAs, Infosec professionals. A well orchestrated effort with skilled experts makes a huge difference in overcoming the aforementioned challenge.

Advancements in Scalability

Over last decade, greater number of organizations have been able to build and scale systems to previously unheard levels. Ground breaking progress has been made on multiple fronts, offering system designers a wider array of options in building, operating and diagnosing massively scalable systems. There are mature open source and commercial tools available in each of areas mentioned above.

CloudAccel has been set up as a one-stop venue that provides the necessary expertise across all necessary domains (which is both technology and industry agnostic) for a highly scalable architecture.?CloudAccel's ScaleAssured? program shall provide and execute on an architecture blueprint that guarantees ability to scale at multiples of current volumes, without exponential growth in operational costs

Scalability is an interesting area, but also vast. We shall be touching upon other aspects of scalability in near future.