Scalable Architecture Development

One lucky tweet or well-timed mention is enough to generate an unexpected spike in traffic for any software application. This is why nowadays it is so important to think about scalability when designing a new application.

Scalable architecture is what will prevent an application and its servers from crashing whenever an increase in traffic occurs. You need to avoid losing profit and ending up with frustrated customers.

Companies must have a plan for developing scalable architecture in order to create systems that handle sudden influxes of users. The company's superiors and managers must understand what scalable architecture really is, why it is important and what its main components are.

Teams and developers should also know the principles behind a scalable web application and how to design them, as well as the different types of scaling methods and how to work with a web development company to build scalable web applications.

A scalable architecture in a web application (or a scalable web application) is what allows it to handle any number of visitors (or requests) interacting simultaneously with the web application. It handles a high volume of users just as well as a low volume of users without the risk of running out of backend resources.

The web application is then able to provision or revoke its resources according to current demand, without compromising its integrity. Scaling up the system software and hardware is what allows the application to handle a larger workload.

Nowadays, there is a wide variety of applications that provide similar experiences to their users. If a web app doesn't load fast enough, isn't available all the time, and crashes whenever traffic increases, users will have no problem moving on to the competition.

Companies that do not invest in scalability and a scalable application architecture from the beginning of their projects will end up facing many problems:

• Web application performance decreases with the increase in active visitors.
• Page load times increase as ecommerce companies update their inventory with traditional web architecture.
• Adding new code to each new product or service becomes time-consuming and expensive. It's also cumbersome and potentially dangerous to the web architecture and application integrity to keep adding new code.

Prioritizing scalability gets around all of these problems. This also leads to lower maintenance costs, better user experience, and greater application agility and flexibility. Other benefits of investing in scalability in a web architecture include:

• Fewer errors
• Less time to implement changes
• Extended life cycle of products and services offered
• Brand loyalty

Another interesting feature of scalable web architecture is that it works both ways. If a company has less demand during the off-season, it will then have the ability to reduce its network as easily as it increased it. This is very useful when it comes to reducing IT costs.

Creating a scalable web application involves many different features. However, the standard components of a web application architecture are fundamentally the same. Here's a closer look at each:

• Front-end : The front-end of an application is the part that directly interacts with the user. Scaling the front end of a web application prevents delays whenever a user performs many actions at the same time. A considerable amount of problems perceived on the frontend are actually caused by the backend.
• Internal process : The backend of a web application reflects each step required to create the frontend. It influences most of the application's performance.
• Database : The database is what collects and stores all the data related to the application. Because they can contain large volumes of data, databases also require scaling. To do this, companies often turn to distributed computing processes and indexes.

Some other factors that influence scalability in web applications include clean coding, third-party services, hardware and framework used.

Scalable Web Application Principles

Developing scalable web applications involves a wide variety of processes and choices that vary depending on the company's vision and needs. However, scalable architecture development follows some basic principles:

Performance

Maintaining a high level of performance during a surge in new visitors is critical to providing a good user experience and promoting brand loyalty. The system must always have the ability to meet expected design requirements.

Continuous availability

Application availability is directly related to ongoing accessibility and feature provision. Ideally, a web application should always be available. Every time an app goes down, the company behind it suffers lost profits and a bad reputation.

Reliability

Reliability factors from the user's perspective and expectations. An application must have the ability to return current data and record and store new data without using old input or inaccurate data. This principle creates good customer experiences in the long term.

Fast data recovery

To retrieve data, the main application depends on the fast functioning of database services. A well-designed application is capable of ensuring fast data recovery, avoiding information bottlenecks that increase page loading times.

Malfunction traceability

To continually maintain and update an application, it is important to keep constant track of any issues that may occur. Tracking defects makes it easier to fix them, especially if they have occurred previously.

Some other extremely important principles behind scalable web application development include manageability, adaptability, and security.

Designing Scalable Web Applications

Designing scalable web applications requires a lot of decision making that helps the business meet its needs. Regardless of whether a company creates an application from scratch or scales an existing one, there are some steps that must be followed to optimize the process.

#1 Understand Stakeholder Expectations and Collect Requirements

The first step is to manage stakeholders' expectations and provide them with sufficient information and reasons to justify their investment. For example, stakeholders are not likely to support investing in application scaling if the reason for doing so is that everyone else is doing it.

#2 Identify potential scalability issues

Companies need to identify any specific issues related to the scalability of their applications. By gathering performance metrics, they will be able to identify areas that need improvement. Some examples of data companies should collect include:

• Apdex Scores
• Error Rates
• Request fees
• Other scalability metrics such as memory utilization, CPU usage, disk and network I/O

#3 Establish a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution

A PaaS solution is an infrastructure setup that helps quickly improve the performance and scalability of an application. In PaaS, a third-party cloud computing platform provides the necessary software and hardware resources.

This means that whenever a company needs to update its application requirements, it simply needs to contact its PaaS vendor and have them take care of everything. It makes it much easier to scale without having to invest in infrastructure resources.

#4 Deploy Scalable Web Application

Once everything else is set, it's time to deploy the scalable web application. After deployment, companies must closely monitor real-time performance and adjust their baselines depending on application needs. Developers can also take time to experiment with different deployment types, infrastructure configurations, and final designs for the customer.

There are some other factors that developers should keep in mind when designing scalable web applications. Let's take a look at some of them.

• Choosing a multi-tier architecture: A multi-tier software model contains three components consisting of the client, the application and the database server. Each of these layers performs only specific essential functions, which greatly improves performance and scalability.
• Taking work away from the core: Distributing as much work as possible throughout the application, away from the core, will avoid unnecessary bottlenecks that can occur when the number of active clients exceeds available resources. This includes tools like a load balancer, multiple servers, and a scalable website.
• Preferring horizontal scaling over vertical scaling: Horizontal scaling involves adding more resources rather than investing in more powerful resources, which is what vertical scaling entails. Adding resources is a faster and cheaper way to increase capacity.
• Making use of cloud storage: Using cloud storage avoids some of the burdens associated with dependence on physical servers. Companies don't need to worry about security, hardware maintenance and infrastructure.

Horizontal, vertical and diagonal scale

Companies have the option to scale their applications in three different ways. Horizontal, vertical and diagonal scaling have their advantages and also their disadvantages.

Horizontal scale

Horizontal scalability, also known as “scaling out,” involves adding more nodes, servers, processes, or machines to existing infrastructure to increase overall performance. Basically, the system breaks down into smaller components and separates into individual machines, increasing the number of resources that perform the same function at the same time.

This is a quick and cost-effective way to increase the performance of a web application. It just requires purchasing additional resources and programming them to perform a certain function.

Vertical scale

Vertical scaling, or “scaling up,” refers to increasing the power of the current machines working behind a web application. This increase in power ultimately leads to an improvement in overall performance. Better features include faster CPUs, increasingly faster memory, larger and faster hard drives, and other features.

Continuously upgrading to more powerful features requires a huge financial investment. Additionally, powerful high-end components can be harder to find, meaning it will take longer to upgrade your system.

Diagonal scale

Diagonal scaling is a combination of horizontal and vertical scaling. It combines upgrading to more powerful components as well as adding new components to the system. In theory, this is the most effective scaling mechanism when it comes to cost and performance optimization.

However, deciding between these three types of scaling will ultimately depend on the application in question, expectations and requirements, and many other variables.

Popular Scalable Web Application Frameworks

As mentioned earlier, developers can choose from many frameworks to design their scalable web applications. Some of the most popular scalable web application frameworks include Node.js, Django, and Ruby on Rails.

These frameworks are typically considered some of the best for scalable programming as they easily handle multiple requests without interruption, support clean and pragmatic application design, and allow developers to create web applications extremely quickly.

Many of the most popular applications rely on these types of frameworks for their scalability. Other types of frameworks available include ASP.NET, AngularJS, React, Yii, and Laravel.

Highly scalable popular applications

Some of the most popular applications to date have initially focused on scalable web architecture. With this, they were able to adapt to the growing number of users, constantly meeting their needs and requirements.

This is exactly why these applications based on a scalable web application remain favorites compared to their competitors over time. Here is a short list of some of the most popular highly scalable applications:

• Day off
• Little
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• mint

Working with BairesDev to build scalable architecture business applications

Instead of building their own development teams, many companies prefer to work with an outsourcing provider to build scalable architecture business applications. Outsourcing has many benefits when it comes to creating a scalable web application.

It is much more cost-effective to work with outsourcing providers than hiring in-house developers. Companies don't have to waste their precious time on extensive recruitment and onboarding processes to find the right employees, nor do they have to invest in training their current talent in creating enterprise or service-oriented architectures.

Outsourcing providers will simply meet each company's requirements and provide the best experts in the field who would be a great fit for the job at hand. Recruiters have access to a rich talent pool with broad skill sets.

By working with outsourcing providers, companies are able to maintain focus on core operations while experiencing rapid development in their projects. Other key benefits of outsourcing scalable app development projects include security, flexibility, risk reduction, and comprehensive business support.

To work with an outsourcing provider to build scalable architecture business applications, companies must follow a few simple steps:

#1 Determine Project Requirements

At this stage, companies need to determine delivery deadlines, resources, limitations, goals and budgets. They should also have an idea of ​​the specific skills and qualifications they are looking for in talent.

#2 Choose a location and collaboration model

Once requirements are defined, companies should begin reviewing preferable locations and collaboration models. It's important to study the talent pools available in different countries, comparing your average expected income, understanding the local business and legal infrastructure, and more.

#3 Select the right supplier

This is where companies choose the outsourcing provider they will work with. When making a decision, companies must consider factors such as company history, track record, testimonials, domain expertise, portfolio, and protection practices.

#4 Create a contract

The final step involves negotiating and signing the contract. Here, negotiation teams or consultants prepare a description of all the details surrounding the project and both parties reach an agreement on the terms that work best in their favor.

Some companies still find it difficult to trust their scalable web architecture projects in the hands of third-party providers and web architects. However, considering the large number of benefits it brings, it might be worth trying with a small project to start.

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