Scalability – Putting it to Work for You

 When working with an application hosting service or a managed hosting company it will be in your best interest if they fully understand scalability and how it can best benefit you and your company.

Simply defined, scalability is the use of scalable code with infrastructure. It is imperative, for scalability to be of maximum benefit, that infrastructure and scalable code be carefully planned to work with and enhance each other. If you are not a computer genius (and not many of us are), even this definition may be hard to completely understand. The good news is this: you don’t have to be a computer genius! Instead, hire a managed hosting company who employs a great number of computer aficionados.

What you will need to have is a basic understanding of the premise so you are equipped to ask the right questions and get the level of service you deserve. You desire your online presence to be reliable and accessible, don’t you? When traffic to your site is extremely high is the exact time you don’t want your site to be unavailable -- this is the very time you need accessibility most. You absolutely cannot afford for your server to be overwhelmed and/or shut down for any period of time. In this high-tech, lightening-fast world in which we live, minutes of unplanned downtime could cost many thousands of dollars. The best managed hosting companies recognize this and take every precaution to keep this from happening.

A scalable system (scalable code working with infrastructure) will increase efficiency in proportion to the resources available. It is the responsibility of the managing host to be certain those resources remain available. If they are not, it could result in lost revenue and unhappy customers, damage to your reputation and other negative consequences.

Under the best circumstances, your infrastructure has been planned with and is fully understood by your hosting provider. They know everything about your business; when it ebbs and flows, what time you are most likely to receive the most traffic, etc. In order to provide consistent reliable service they make certain your needs are met at all times. If you experience an unexpected, huge burst of traffic to your website it could become overwhelmed if the proper steps are not in place. How can this be avoided? The top managed hosting companies are ready for just about anything. They have multiple servers available to host your website. This is where the importance of scalability is clearly seen. If the first server is overwhelmed, shutdown or otherwise negatively impacted, a scalable system will allocate extra processors from the second server, third, fourth, fifth, etc. until all of your websites demands are met.

Your managed host provider will have analyzed your market and technology trends well in advance. Once having identified the scalability issues, they can work (in advance) of any projected bottleneck.

Proper planning, along with excellent service by your managing host provider will supply many layers of protection to your business. Scalability is just one of the ways they will ensure your needs are met and your customers receive the very best service available.