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.

Table of Contents

Part I: Staffing a Scalable Organization

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

Part II: Building Processes for Scale

Chapter 7: Why Processes Are Critical to Scale

Chapter 8: Managing Incidents and Problems

Chapter 9: Managing Crises and Escalations

Chapter 10: Controlling Change in Production Environments

Chapter 11: Determining Headroom for Applications

Chapter 12: Establishing 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?

Part Ill: Architecting Scalable Solutions

Chapter 20: Designing for Any Technology

Chapter 21: Creating Fault-lsolative Architectural Structures

Chapter 22: Introduction to the AKF Scale Cube

Chapter 23: Splitting Applications for Scale

Chapter 24: Splitting Databases for Scale

Chapter 25: Caching for Performance and Scale

Chapter 26: Asynchronous Design for Scale

Part IV: Solving Other Issues and Challenges

Chapter 27: Too Much Data

Chapter 28: Grid Computing

Chapter 29: Soaring in the Clouds

Chapter 30: Making Applications Cloud Ready

Chapter 31: Monitoring Applications

Chapter 32: Planning Data Centers

Chapter 33: Putting It All Together

Part V: Appendices

Appendix A: Calculating Availability

Appendix B: Capacity Planning Calculations

Appendix C: Load and Performance Calculations

About the Authors

Martin L. Abbott is a founding partner at the growth and scalability advisory firm AKF Partners. He was formerly chief operations officer at Quigo, an advertising technology startup sold to AOL, where he was responsible for product strategy, product management, technology development, and client services. Marty spent nearly six years at eBay, most recently as senior vice president of technology, chief technology officer, and member of the executive staff. Prior to his time at eBay, Marty held domestic and international engineering, management, and executive positions at Gateway and Motorola. He has served on the boards of directors of several private and public companies. Marty has a B.S. in computer science from the United States Military Academy, has an M.S. in computer engineering from the University of Florida, is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program, and has a Doctor of Management from Case Western Reserve University.

Michael T. Fisher is a founding partner at the growth and scalability advisory firm AKF Partners. Prior to cofounding AKF Partners, Michael was the chief technology officer at Quigo, a startup Internet advertising company that was acquired by AOL in 2007. Before his time at Quigo, Michael served as vice president, engineering and architecture, for PayPal, Inc., an eBay company. Prior to joining PayPal, he spent seven years at General Electric helping to develop the company’s technology strategy and was a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Michael served six years as a Captain and pilot in the U.S. Army. He received a Ph.D. and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, an M.S. in information systems from Hawaii-Pacific University, and a B.S. in computer science from the United States Military Academy (West Point). Michael is an adjunct professor in the design and innovation department at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.