The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise

The Art of Scalability is an excellent book, written by some guys that know A LOT about scaling technology and organizations. These were the guys that scaled the infrastructure at eBay to support massive growth in the late 90s through the mid 2000s. The book focuses on people, process, and technology - ALL of which are critical to building a scalable company. Some folks write books purely focused on the technical aspect of scaling a business, which I think misses most of the picture. Yes there are certain technical design principles that are critical such as scale out, not up, implement caching, etc. The point is that if you hire and fire the right people and implement correct processes you have a much greater chance to implement the appropriate technology infrastructure to support a high-growth business. What really elevates this book from others is that it is not too abstract when talking about people and process. They provide detailed examples of what a post mortem meeting agenda should be and who should attend, what the role of the problem manager should be, etc. ON the technical side of the equation, they spend a lot of time discussing design principles and architecture trade-offs. This includes when to split databases, separating applications or actions into 'swim lanes', etc. There is enough here to satisfy someone who is just looking for technical design and architecture as well. If you are involved in building or supporting a scalable technology business this is a MUST read.

The Art of Scalability provides a broad ranging, comprehensive overview of the considerations required to address the challenges of increasing requirements for larger, faster, reliable, and yet low cost Internet applications. The book does not only consider the technical details and conceptual frameworks required to develop a scalable and available site, but also addresses the often over looked human aspects. Covered are topics related to how to define roles, find, train, manage, measure, and grow team members that support the applications and infrastructure. Organizational considerations including comparison of various organzitional strategies are discussed. The book covers high level conceptualizations of the architectural and design strategies and models that have proved successful in use at several well known companies. While it would be interesting to dig deeper into the technical details for many readers, this book is extraordinally well suited to technical managers, architects, leaders, and executives that must appreciate the key concepts and strategies of highly available and highly scalable systems. And while not deeply technical, it provides the hands on architect, developer, or systems administator crucial design goals and strategies that should be considered in the day-to-day requirements, architecture, design, implement, and operate cycle of Internet applications. An excellent read for every technical architect, designer, developer, manager, executive, and leader in organziations that must successfully implement and manage large scale systems.

This is not your typical tech book. It's an unusual mix of lessons learned on both deep technical issues, as well as broad business and people management topics. One of the most difficult challenges in the Internet era is "surviving success." You may think this is a good problem to have, but that's little consolation if your company goes under because you couldn't scale your business or your software. If you've come up with something promising, and your business is off to a good start, then I can only hope you don't read this too late. These guys have "been there and done that" at some of the most successful companies of our time, and they are giving back by sharing what they've learned. Very few people on the planet have the experience they do, and this is one of the most important, practical, actionable and relevant books for those of us in the business of running commercial Internet-based businesses.

When a web site is down, sometimes they'll call someone like me to figure out whether or not it's a denial-of-service attack (my money's on "no"). Then, when they realize their systems just can't handle their newfound popularity, they'll call a scalability expert, of which Marty and Fish are among the best of the best. If you're running a high-transaction-volume technology operation, particularly a website, this is stuff you need to know. Many of us who worked for Tom, Marty, & Fish at eBay / PayPal during times of extreme and rapid growth learned a lot of this stuff from our own experience, but for me the book was a nice refresher course, and also covered some areas where I had less personal experience in sufficient depth that I was able to fill in some gaps. When pressed for time, it's going to be great to be able to tell someone to go buy this book rather than try to explain all the things they're going to need to do to scale their technology organization and their website operation.

Imagine a highly scalable architecture of a successful ecommerce company. If you visualize distributed data centers, content distribution networks, Brewers CAP theorem etc you have only half of the scalability story. This book tells the whole story of organizational scalability of which technical scalability is only a part. Consider some examples like how do you perform reliable change management of a vast infrastructure to maintain business continuity or what should be the model for unambiguous responsibility-accountibility in a scalable organization. I have worked in a critical scalability project of PayPal.com and can vouch that this book is a gem.