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How to Build a Scalable Software Architecture?

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Scalable Software Architecture

Ever been vexed by not being able to access a website real quick? Maybe you were about to send an important email or do some online shopping, or even a bank transfer, and the system started dragging. All you could do is wait, wondering when the website would finally load. Now, picture this happening to your own product’s page—that it’s your customers who are annoyed due to the delay, resulting in huge loss in sales and website traffic. 

Imagine you’ve developed a new software product and began gaining users. Your marketing campaign then attracts even more customers, and soon thousands are using your product. Suddenly, they can’t access the system. What’s the problem?

Well, in scalable software, the more users, the slower the system goes. If the load of requests and operations exceeds the limit that is above what a server can handle, it may result in server burnout and crashes, and subsequently, the service becomes unavailable, with random errors and really slow content loading. The users will give up on your product, and it also damages the brand reputation and misses business opportunities.

In this article, we will talk about the main principles of scalable software and what affects product scalability especially when opting for software development outsourcing services.

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What is Scalability?

Scalability refers to how much growth in users a system can support. If all of a sudden a million people use your product, a truly scalable product will cope without problems. Non-scalable products bring about delays that harm user and customer experience. You can expect a lot of rework from a software development solution company in India & coding to get things running up again. For instance, in the case of a scalable product, additional resources could be added and the structure with a central node can be kept intact—This is an example of a successful software product and excellent software development outsourcing services.

Scalable software lets your business stay stable in an industry that’s very dynamic. This provides higher agility with more affordable upgrades in the long term. But scaling is not easy and requires excellent development.

What affects Software Scalability?

Building a scalable software isn’t that complex…What you really need to know is the number of users your system can handle concurrently. Identify performance and scalability factors that impact on the system prior to making any improvements or doing capacity planning.

System scalability is extremely important in architecture. The quality of the architecture would support the product quality and further enhance the software in many ways, from runtime reduction in hard-hit areas to caching, which would eventually benefit and ease the memory footprint. Developing a scalable system architecture is more an art than a science.

The other critical factor is load testing for sustainability as it showcases the performance of software under maximum load and detects the peak point beyond which users are unable to access the system. Proper load testing if you hire software developers will help rid software of bottlenecks and provide better scalability & growth.

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Read More The Future of Open Source Software: Trends to Watch

Architecture of Scalable Software

  • Horizontal scaling is elastic and dynamic; it means that additional machines can be added to the existing pool without affecting current resources. Every machine works independently, so that there is no risk of a single point of failure. This method comes in very handy in businesses which have grown really fast, like Facebook and Google horizontally scale their machines in order to be able to deal with so many users. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global cloud-based horizontal scaling market is expected to reach USD 17.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 18.3% from 2020. Another additional advantage of this method is load balancing: tasks can be equally divided among a number of servers, ensuring efficient usage of resources and high availability.
  • Vertical scaling–more compute power (CPU and memory) are added to an existing machine. This strategy is secure and works well under light loads, which makes it of good use for small to medium-sized applications. However, it does scale well beyond some capacity due to physical and functional constraints. There could be downtime in case the load increases too much, and there is a hard limit as to how much you can upgrade a single machine. 

According to Gartner, vertical scaling has the effect of increasing costs; the bill for high-end servers can run upwards of $10,000. Not to mention the downtime for upgrades hurts your business—you certainly don’t want that for your applications that need high availability.

  • Cloud Storage—No more guessing about capacity that you may need in the future. On the contrary, extra resources & space can be added in a second if needed; you only pay for what you use—This forms the core benefit of cloud storage. In a 2023 State of the Cloud Report by Flexera, 92% of enterprises were using a multi-cloud strategy; therefore, increasingly relying on cloud storage solutions for their data management. Companies can scale their storage up or down, depending on demand and without incurring extra costs due to over- or under-provisioning. Besides, Cloud Storage Providers usually provide redundancy and backup services to ensure the safety and availability of data.
  • Extraneous hardware components add to Physical servers—an expensive operation to build, maintain, and secure. New projects are delayed while waiting for storage to be completed; risks of hardware becoming obsolete exist. According to a report from TechTarget, TCO for physical servers includes the purchase price, associated continuous maintenance, power, cooling, and space requirements that can cost more than $1,000 per server per year. In addition, the pace of technological change is so fast that physical hardware can be obsolete in a few years, hence needing constant updating and replacement.
  • Microservice architecture goes about breaking down large software into smaller, independent pieces. It enables different parts of an application to work independently, and thus, in cases where demand is particularly high at one node, other nodes can go on functioning without increasing the load on that node. Because of modularity, development, testing, and deployment of their services are done independently by teams, making the management of large applications less complex. 

According to the 2021 Microservices Adoption in the Enterprise report from O’Reilly, 77% of organizations adopted microservices in order to enhance scalability and maintainability. This architecture also enables CI/CD, which allows for increased release cycles and practices of more agile development.

  • Monolithic architecture is traditional in having a single large code base with no modularity and hence scalability—it scales the whole application and not sub-components and are a part of software development outsourcing services. Any change or update would require the redeployment of the entire application, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Despite all this, a lot of legacy systems are still based on monolithic architectures because of their simplicity and ease of development for smaller applications. The drawbacks, however, become apparent with growing complexity. According to a Lightstep survey, 60% of developers reported that managing monolithic codebases is one of the main challenges—pointing out the need for more scalable architectural approaches.

Well, if one is not sure whether his project has to be scaled, Quickway Infosystems offers in-depth consultation and software development outsourcing services for Scalable Architectures. We make every cooperation with customers time, resources, and cost-effective. We will never force scalability if your product doesn’t need it.

Ready to kick start your new project? Get a free quote today.

Read MoreTop Companies Redefining Outsourced Software Development

Cloud vs. Physical Servers

While selecting the server your business wants, focus on the differences in user experience, cost, and timeframe. If your business has outgrown the capacity of a physical server or is expanding geographically, then a cloud server would be suitable. Hire software developers who can guide you with the same. 

Cloud servers are virtual servers that are constructed and hosted, and delivered via a cloud computing platform; they help to optimize IT performance without the costs associated with dedicated infrastructure.

Pros:

  • Data backup and restore through remote access.
  • Scalable storage; you pay for only what you use.
  • Server maintenance performed by the providers.

Cons:

  • Access is Internet dependent.
  • Costs may not justify the benefits if your uptime isn’t critical.
  • Transition from legacy systems is expensive and time-consuming.

Physical Servers:

You have physical servers dedicated to your business needs, with separate computer units. They need IT capacity and expertise to maintain, patch, and upgrade.

Pros:

  • Physical control over your backups
  • Critical data remains in-house
  • No dependence on an Internet connection

Cons:

  • No guaranteed recovery time or uptime.
  • Space, power, and cooling requirements
  • On-site data center management requirement
  • Questions to consider for cloud or physical servers: timelines, compliance, workload consistency, internal staff talents, etc.

Read MoreThe Evolution of Software Development: Trends Shaping the Future

Build Scalable Software Systems With QWI

We have developed many scalable softwares at QWI to handle peak loads for several clients from different industries. As a top software development company in India, we possess experience in a variety of industries to make sure that the unique requirements of each client are met with a robust and adaptable system. In the modern, fast-paced digital age, scalable software is very necessary.

It smoothes business processes and makes continuous operation possible, even in peak demand conditions, which can ensure reliability, performance, and customer satisfaction. It is because of our innovative culture and passion for excellence that we have managed to provide world-class solutions to help our clients stay ahead of their peers in the industry. Contact us today to get started with scalable softwares and software development outsourcing services.

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