How to scale a product using cloud computing?

Building an enterprise-class product requires scalability as a key component from the day the product is envisioned. In general, product managers tend to focus on their MVP with no idea of scalability which could be easily achieved via cloud computing. Based on my experiences with many products over the years I believe there are two aspects to any SME product:

• Design for the best user experience
• Scale for the user experience

Keep in mind building a scalable enterprise-class product is a process that when we build a product, the objective is to build it to perfection. Until you deploy it to the public you won’t have the volume of real-time data or consumers actually using the product. End-users may interact with the product differently than what you may have expected or they may request additional features, this does happen often.

Scaling a product once it is live is very important for any product to succeed.

What is Cloud Scalability?

Cloud scalability refers to the ability of a cloud computing system to easily and efficiently accommodate growth in demand for its services. This growth can be in terms of an increase in the number of users or in the amount of resources required to handle those users’ needs.

A scalable cloud system can adapt to changes in demand without requiring significant changes to its infrastructure or affecting the performance and availability of the services it provides. This is achieved by the use of various techniques such as load balancing, auto-scaling, and elastic computing.

Load balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers, ensuring that no single server becomes overwhelmed by requests. Auto-scaling automatically adjusts the number of resources allocated to a particular application or service based on its current demand. Elastic computing refers to the ability of a cloud system to quickly provision or de-provision computing resources as needed.

Cloud scalability allows a cloud computing system to be responsive to changes in demand, enabling it to maintain a high level of performance and availability even as usage patterns fluctuate.

ARCHITECTS HAVE TWO OPTIONS TO SCALE THE PRODUCT IN CLOUD COMPUTING:

To scale a product from MVP in cloud computing, architects have two options: vertical scaling, which increases the resources of a single server, or horizontal scaling, which adds more servers to the system.

Vertical scaling

In cloud computing, vertical scaling refers to the process of increasing the computing resources, such as CPU, RAM, storage, and network capacity, of a single virtual machine (VM) to accommodate the growing demand for an application or service.

Vertical scaling is a cost-effective solution for small to medium-sized workloads that can’t be easily distributed across multiple servers. It’s a simple and efficient way to handle spikes in traffic or workload without incurring additional costs associated with deploying and managing multiple servers.

Horizontal scaling

Horizontal scaling refers to the process of adding more computing resources, such as servers, to a system to handle increased demand or workload. This approach involves distributing the workload across multiple servers, also known as instances or nodes, to improve scalability, reliability, and performance.

Horizontal scaling is a common approach for cloud-based applications and services that need to handle large volumes of traffic or users. For example, an e-commerce website may use horizontal scaling to add more servers during peak shopping seasons to ensure fast and reliable access for customers.

Horizontal scaling also offers better fault tolerance and resiliency as the workload is distributed across multiple servers, reducing the impact of potential failures or downtime of a single server.

Diagonal scaling

Diagonal scaling, also known as diagonal scaling out, is a hybrid approach that combines vertical and horizontal scaling to improve the scalability, performance, and cost-efficiency of cloud-based applications and services.

In diagonal scaling, a system is horizontally scaled by adding more servers or instances to handle increased demand, and then vertically scaled by adding more computing resources to each instance to improve performance and capacity.

This approach allows for greater flexibility and efficiency in managing the computing resources of a system. For example, if a particular instance is experiencing high traffic, it can be vertically scaled to handle the increased demand, while other instances can remain unchanged or be horizontally scaled as needed.

Diagonal scaling can also help to optimize costs by allowing for more efficient use of resources. For example, instead of scaling up a single instance to handle a spike in traffic, which can be expensive, diagonal scaling can horizontally scale out the workload across multiple instances and then vertically scale each instance as needed, providing a more cost-effective solution.

One of the main challenges of diagonal scaling is the complexity of managing multiple instances with varying computing resources, as well as maintaining data consistency and managing communication between instances.

Benefits Of Scalability In Cloud Computing

Scalability is a critical aspect of cloud computing that offers many benefits to businesses and organizations. Here are some of the key benefits of scalability in cloud computing:

• Improved performance: Scalability ensures that applications and services can handle increased workload and traffic without experiencing performance issues, ensuring that users can access them quickly and efficiently.
• Greater flexibility: Scalability enables businesses to adjust their computing resources according to their changing needs, allowing them to scale up or down their applications and services as required, and reducing wastage of resources.
• Increased availability: Scalability allows businesses to distribute their workload across multiple servers, ensuring that their applications and services are always available and accessible to users, even in the event of hardware failures or disruptions.
• Reduced costs: Scalability in cloud computing allows businesses to reduce their infrastructure costs by only using the resources they need, without having to invest in expensive hardware and equipment that may be underutilized.
• Enhanced customer experience: Scalability ensures that applications and services are always available and responsive, improving the customer experience and satisfaction, and helping businesses to build customer loyalty.
• Better business agility: Scalability enables businesses to respond quickly to changing market conditions and customer demands, allowing them to innovate and launch new products and services quickly and efficiently.

Overall, scalability is an essential aspect of cloud computing that offers many benefits to businesses and organizations, helping them to improve their performance, flexibility, availability, and customer experience, while reducing costs and improving business agility.

Most businesses develop products on the cloud with a pay-as-you-go model. The main advantage is that the cloud computing based architecture ensures scalability and decreases other complexities. Other terms used are: Microservices based architecture and development. Microservices are a shift from traditional software development architecture that has gained popularity in the last 5-6 years. Microservices architecture has been used by some major consumer-facing technology companies such as Amazon, Twitter, and PayPal.

In general, a scalable product must have a well-defined database architecture and data strategy.

THERE ARE A FEW KEY AREAS THAT I WOULD RECOMMEND FOCUSING ON, FROM A SCALABILITY STANDPOINT:

● Query performance and optimization
● Data caching
● Replica servers
● Database shards

AS FAR AS SERVERS ARE CONCERNED, BELOW ARE THE AREAS THAT ALSO NEED TO BE WELL THOUGHT OF:

● Proven technology
● Data exchange in compressed format
● Load balance environment

Therefore, it is always advisable to lay the right foundation before you start a build and keep revisiting it as your progress with the product.

Below is the Seattle Conference on Scalability: Scaling Google for Every User