The Art of Scalability Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise

by Abbott, Martin L.; Fisher, Michael T.

• ISBN13: 9780134032801
• ISBN10: 0134032802
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-06-03
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

The Comprehensive, Proven Approach to IT Scalability–Updated with New Strategies, Technologies, and Case Studies

 

In The Art of Scalability, Second Edition, leading scalability consultants Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher cover everything you need to know to smoothly scale products and services for any requirement. This extensively revised edition reflects new technologies, strategies, and lessons, as well as new case studies from the authors’ pioneering consulting practice, AKF Partners.

 

Writing for technical and nontechnical decision-makers, Abbott and Fisher cover everything that impacts scalability, including architecture, process, people, organization, and technology. Their insights and recommendations reflect more than thirty years of experience at companies ranging from eBay to Visa, and Salesforce.com to Apple.

 

You’ll find updated strategies for structuring organizations to maximize agility and scalability, as well as new insights into the cloud (IaaS/PaaS) transition, NoSQL, DevOps, business metrics, and more. Using this guide’s tools and advice, you can systematically clear away obstacles to scalability–and achieve unprecedented IT and business performance.

 

Coverage includes

• Why scalability problems start with organizations and people, not technology, and what to do about it

• Actionable lessons from real successes and failures

• Staffing, structuring, and leading the agile, scalable organization

• Scaling processes for hyper-growth environments

• Architecting scalability: proprietary models for clarifying needs and making choices–including 15 key success principles

• Emerging technologies and challenges: data cost, datacenter planning, cloud evolution, and customer-aligned monitoring

• Measuring availability, capacity, load, and performance

Author Biography

Martin L. Abbott is a technology and business executive with executive experience in Fortune 500 and internet startup companies. He was formerly the COO of Quigo, an advertising technology startup sold to AOL, where he was responsible for product strategy, product management, technology, and client services. Prior to Quigo, Marty spent nearly six years at eBay, most recently as the SVP of Technology/CTO during which time he was also a member of eBay's executive staff. Prior to eBay, Marty held domestic and international engineering, management, and executive positions at Gateway and Motorola.  Marty has a Doctorate of Management from Case Western Reserve University, an MS in Computer Engineering from University of Florida, a BS from the United States Military Academy (West Point) and is a graduate of Harvard Business School.

 

Michael T. Fisher is a veteran software and technology executive with experience in both Fortune 500 and startup companies. Michael's experience includes two years as the chief technology officer of Quigo, a startup internet advertising company that was acquired by AOL in 2007. He also served as Quigo's president for a transition period post-acquisition. Prior to Quigo, Michael served as vice president of Engineering & Architecture for PayPal, Inc., an eBay company, where he was responsible for the development organization of over 200 engineers. Prior to joining PayPal, Michael spent seven years at General Electric helping to develop the company's technology strategy and processes. Mike has a PhD in Management from Case Western Reserve University, an MS from Hawaii Pacific University, an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and a BS from the United States Military Academy (West Point).  He is an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Impact of People and Leadership on Scalability

Chapter 2 - Roles for the Scalable Technology Organization

Chapter 3 - Designing Organizations

Chapter 4 - Leadership 101

Chapter 5 - Management 101

Chapter 6 - Relationships, Mindset and the Business Case

Chapter 7 - Why Processes Are Critical To Scale

Chapter 8 - Managing Incidents and Problems

Chapter 9 - Managing Crisis and Escalations

Chapter 10 - Controlling Change in Production Environments

Chapter 11 - Determining Headroom for Applications

Chapter 12 - Exploring Architectural Principles

Chapter 13 - Joint Architecture Design and Architecture Review Board

Chapter 14 - Agile Architecture Design

Chapter 15 - Focus on Core Competencies: Build versus Buy

Chapter 16 - Determining Risk

Chapter 17 - Performance and Stress Testing

Chapter 18 - Barrier Conditions and Rollback

Chapter 19 – Fast or Right?

Chapter 20 – Designing for Any Technology

Chapter 21 - Creating Fault Isolative Architectural Structures

Chapter 22 - Introduction to the AKF Scale Cube

Chapter 23 - Splitting Applications for Scale

Chapter 24 - Splitting Databases for Scale Caching for Performance and Scale

Chapter 25 - Splitting Databases for Scale

Chapter 26 - Asynchronous Design for Scale

Chapter 27 - Too Much Data

Chapter 28 - Clouds and Grids

Chapter 29 – Soaring in the Clouds

Chapter 30 – Plugging in the Grid

Chapter 31 – Monitoring Applications

Chapter 32 – Planning Data Centers

Chapter 33 – Putting It All Together

Appendix A  - Calculating Availability

Appendix B  - Capacity Planning Calculations

Appendix C - Load and Performance Calculations