How to develop scalable, high-performance IT solutions

When a company scales, it is not limited to products or the number of customers and employees. Scaling an organisation also involves scaling software systems: technology must support growth.

Scalable IT solutions allow companies to react flexibly to changes, maximising efficiency and productivity. And depending on the IT infrastructure used by the company, there are fundamental differences. While in-house server systems are generally cumbersome and inflexible in terms of scalability, scalability in the cloud is simple and fast.

 

A basic distinction is made between vertical and horizontal scaling. Let us take a closer look at both options.

Vertical scaling (scale-up) increases the capacity of hardware or software by adding resources to a physical system. This can be done, for example, by adding computing power to a server to make it faster or by adding hard disks to an existing system if more storage capacity is needed.

Vertical scaling is easy to implement and is cost-effective. However, the vertical approach will eventually reach the limits of RAM and storage and more resources will have to be added to meet demand.

 

Horizontal scaling (scale-out) increases performance capacity by adding more resources of the same type to the system. For example, instead of increasing the capacity of a server to improve its performance, more servers are added to the system. A load balancer helps distribute the workload over several servers according to availability. This increases the overall performance of the system.

More computing resources mean more fault tolerance and less risk of downtime. However, adding servers and load balancers can be costly. One should consider using a combination of local and cloud resources to handle the increased traffic.

 

Being able to adapt quickly to market changes is a key advantage of scalable IT solutions. Businesses can expand or reduce their IT resources as needed, without sacrificing performance. This is especially important in sectors with highly fluctuating demand.

Scalable IT solutions offer better cost control. Rather than investing in expensive hardware and infrastructure that may not be fully utilised, companies can scale as needed and optimise IT spending.

Companies using scalable IT solutions are better able to exploit new business opportunities and differentiate themselves from the competition. They can respond quickly to market trends and bring innovative products and services to market faster.

 

Besides the vertical and horizontal scaling described above, there are other scaling models that are used to solve architectural scaling problems.

Load balancers are essential components for the efficient distribution of requests and workloads among a set of back-end servers. Their primary function is to provide for the optimal utilisation of available resources, preventing overloads on individual servers and thus improving the resilience and availability of the system. Using this process allows IT teams to ensure that services are always active and scalable, even during traffic peaks or failures.

Among the main activities a load balancer performs are:

 

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent a strategic infrastructure to improve the speed and efficiency of access to web resources. They consist of a number of global servers that distribute static web content (such as JavaScript files, CSS, images and videos) in a uniform manner close to the end user. With this system, the content is not served directly from the main server, but from the CDN nodes closest to the user, greatly improving loading speed.

About 80 per cent of a web application may consist of static elements, and downloading this content to a CDN brings significant benefits:

 

Microservices are an architectural approach in which an application is broken down into a series of small independent applications, or services, each of which manages a specific functionality. Contrary to monolithic systems, microservices do not depend on each other to function, but communicate through defined interfaces, ensuring that the entire system is modular and flexible.

Once a monolithic software system grows over time, it becomes increasingly complex and difficult to maintain. Each new functionality requires changes to the core code, increasing the risk of errors and making the infrastructure less agile. In these cases, the transition to a microservices architecture can be advantageous, as it divides the system into smaller, independent components, each of which can be developed, deployed and scaled separately.

Microservices offer significant advantages in terms of scalability: each service can be scaled according to demand without affecting the others, optimising the use of resources. They also support agile development, as teams can work on several services simultaneously, accelerating the release of new functionality. This architecture is particularly useful for companies that need a flexible IT infrastructure ready to respond quickly to market changes.

For more details on the use of microservices, see our blog article ‘Monolithic architecture and microservices compared’.

 

Sharding is an advanced database management technique that consists of dividing a large database into smaller units, called ‘shards’, to improve overall manageability and performance. Every shard represents a partition of the main database and can be distributed across different servers, allowing the load to be balanced and the speed of response to queries to be increased.

With the growth of a database over time, caused by an increase in content or users, the volume of queries and transactions can significantly slow down the system's responses. With sharding, on the other hand, each shard can respond to a specific portion of queries, reducing the load on each server and improving the overall scalability of the system.

Using this method is very effective in complex database scenarios and in contexts such as blockchain, where it is essential to manage huge amounts of data and transactions. By dividing the database into shards, not only faster response times are achieved, but also greater resilience, as problems in a single shard do not compromise the operation of the entire database.

IT scalability is a crucial factor for companies that want to grow sustainably and competitively. Implementing scalable solutions allows you to quickly adapt to market changes, reduce operational costs and improve the reliability of your services. Whether vertical scaling, horizontal scaling, load balancing, caching via CDN, microservices architectures or database sharding, each of these strategies supports business growth by optimising the performance and resilience of IT systems.

DevInterface can offer essential support for the development of scalable and high-performance IT solutions. Thanks to its experience, it can help you design and implement software architectures optimised for growth, choosing the most suitable strategies to guarantee flexibility and reliability. DevInterface collaborates with companies to build infrastructures that evolve with market needs, leveraging advanced technologies such as cloud computing, microservices and CDN networks to guarantee high performance even during traffic peaks. 
This enables companies to focus on their core business, knowing they can count on resilient, effective IT systems that are ready to support their future development.