There’s been a growing focus on scalability as the Internet of Things has continued its rapid growth. Perhaps due in part to large online failures during periodic or individual events, perhaps due in part to simple growth, the reason is less important than the reality that scalability is a critical technological driver for a variety of new technologies – cloud and SDN being the most often referenced.
But while we’ve been focusing on scalability we may have been overlooking the related and no less important availability factor. These two “itys” are related, as scalability is one way to achieve availability when dealing with growth, rapid or otherwise. But availability also means being sensitive to failure.
Cloud, in general, is designed for scalability. It is specifically architected to provide elasticity – which is scalability both in and out. Cloud is designed to enable resource growth and contraction to match demand.