Scaling for E-Business: Technologies, Models, Performance, and Capacity Planning

This is one of a series of books about performance and capacity metrics by the authors. Each of their books covers a specific environment (client/server, mainframes, web services), and each explains the theory, quantitative methods and practical approaches using common tools like Microsoft Excel.This book's focus is on performance and capacity of applications in the e-commerce infrastructure, and like the other books by the authors, it covers every facet while explaining the what's and why's. More importantly, this book will not overwhelm readers who are rusty in math because the authors weave in refresher material as they go along. What makes this book valuable is the blend of business and technical topics, particularly in Part I where business models are thoroughly discussed. I personally believe that this material is as important as the more technically focused material in subsequent chapters because it wakes up the technical reader as to why their job of developing scalable solutions is important by linking the technical aspects to business imperatives.Parts II (Evaluating E-Business Infrastructure and Services) and III (Capacity Planning for E-Business) are the heart of the technical matter, and the chapters systematically dissect each aspect of an e-commerce infrastructure from the application layer point of view. This is where quantitative methods are introduced and where the value of the spreadsheets on the CD ROM increase. Note that there are more up-to-date versions of these spreadsheets on the book's associated website, as well as errata for the book.Practical considerations that blend the business and technical perspectives are presented in Part IV (Models of Specific E-Business Segments). This chapter consists of case studies that tie together all of the preceding material using real world examples.Because this book is more focused on performance and capacity at the application and business model layer, you should read the authors' newest book, "Capacity Planning for Web Services: Metrics, Models, and Methods". That book covers the lower level details of the infrastructureto round out the picture of an end-to-end view of performance and capacity management.

This book is an excellent application of formal methodologies for e-business cases. The examples are useful according to the explanations. I was expecting more emphasis on cost of IT resources or methods in order to calculate. But, the authors guide the book in the resource and performance chapters showing an approach on how to measure from regular sites not from new e-business projects which begin from nothing, without any data from logs or similar metrics. However, the estrict compliance with the methodology presented and the explanation about security provided me with a good reason to have it.

I think it is the only book that deals with the e-business implementation methodocally and lays down a formal procedure. It is very well written and contains appropriate examples. It is recommendable not only for designers but also for managers.

Both "old" and "new" economy companies are scrambling to develop e-business systems to take advantage of the Internet revolution. This is the first book in the market to provide a framework that systems architects can use to build scalable solutions or to enhance the user experience of existing systems. There are academic papers that cover related topics at a very abstract level to be of practical use and similarly, there are practical articles that cover very specific topics. This book is a very nice compromise between those two extremes. I found the chapters on characterization of e-business workloads and on the development of performance models to be especially useful.

Best book in print for designing e-business networking systems. This book leads a designer of E-business solutions through the steps necessary to ensure QoS objectives are meet, performance requirements are satisfied, and networks aren't over engineered. As an instructor of E-commerce Network Engineering for the Univeristy of California, I'm familar with current published literature, and there isn't anything out there that compares in clarity and completeness. This is Daniel Menasce's third book on the subject, and his best by far. On my short list of must read books for network engineers and system architects of E-business solutions.