Does improved scalability mean reliability?

The idea behind a scalable business is that it can grow and expand, including into different geographic regions, with minimal incremental costs. Essential to this is efficiency. If a business isn’t operating as efficiently as possible, it’s not just going to mean problems regarding future growth. It’s going to mean problems in the present as well. Any business, regardless of size, has a fear of large-scale changes that could impact them, as well as economic downturns. Even a mild recession could mean the end for many businesses, but when they’re scalable, it also means they’re equipped to adapt to changes.

If your business is scalable, it’s also inherently efficient in its overall operations. When you’re scalable, this means you’re already keeping costs as low as possible while ensuring production levels are optimal. Today enterprises re-architect the platform for greater scalability, stability, and sustainability. Large enterprises find that there are new opportunities because of changes globally-for example, maybe it would be ideal to expand into an emerging market. If they’re already scalable in their approach and their framework, they may be more readily able to do this.

Secondly, the businesses that are ready to adapt quickly and seamlessly are going to have a competitive advantage, so maintaining a scalable framework at all times can help them do this. Scalability is a term we often hear in business but what does it really mean? One would not be wrong for saying ‘growth’ but it encompasses a whole lot more. Flexibility, agility, versatility –equips your business for expansion but also prepares for unforeseen changes that can and have blown many a business off course. Scalability and reliability are sometimes thought of as separate aspects of infrastructure and design. However, it is possible to consider reliability and scalability as complementary axes, both contributing to the overall goal of building a robust platform.

It’s certainly not sufficient to think only of scalability to obtain reliability and performance. The connections between and the nature of the nodes themselves is also important, but at the conceptual level of the network, reliability and scalability are two side of the same coin when it comes to buying long-term stability. Achieving the success factor depends on the choice of hardware, but much of the success of a scalable and reliable cluster depends on the ease of use and flexibility of the control interface .The optimal strategy for maintaining reliable and consistent performance is one of including redundant capacity, and designing for scalability is the best way to maintain that redundant capacity.

Deepak Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA