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Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 10:15 am - 11:15 am
Speaker:
John Engates, CTO, Rackspace Managed Hosting.
Question: What should web-based businesses fear the most when it comes to their Linux or Open Source applications?
Answer: Too much success.
They start out with a great idea and they build a proof of concept site. It works great and the beta users love it. But what happens when it's opened up to the masses? It's difficult to predict where and when an application will hit a wall. What are the bottlenecks? How much should be budgeted for infrastructure and how soon will it be needed? What lies ahead?
With the advent of Web 2.0, Software as a Service, and the popularity of social networking on the rise, application architects and developers are under pressure to scale their infrastructure to keep up with demand. This can be a daunting task given that they are also under pressure to help launch the business, deliver new features and functionality, fix bugs, hire new employees, keep up the blog and still maintain some semblance of a life.
Many developers develop their Linux applications without thinking about how the application will scale beyond a few hundred users. They tend to think in terms of functionality first and scalability later.
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