Are these business requirements or technology requirements? Actually, they are both and indeed they are quite interconnected. Scalability from the technology side feeds scalability from the business side and the same can be said for flexibility and agility. So while I’m not a network or software architect, I thought these were important ideas to bring up.
What is scalability? Scalability is the ability of an organization’s technologies to increase transactional processing as the organization needs grow. It may also refer to single event spikes in processing. Scalability exists in several different areas: network, database, application, and I’m sure there are more. The network side for me is simply a combination of server and bandwidth capabilities. This is critical as legacy HR systems (all of you still running COBOL processes) may require more processing power and trying to run detailed analytics in Crystal Enterprise simply is not nearly as efficient as running a nice OLAP cube. If you’re running Oracle 10g you probably have a more scalable computing platform than most other models.
Database scalability refers (in my feeble uncomprehending mind) to the accommodation of large and complex table structures AND the increasing need to hold larger populations of records. Much of this has to do with how an application is written, but the design of the database engine also has much to do with the handling of large populations.
Most critical to me (and the only thing I really know about) is application scalability. The design of the application tables plays heavily in the overall referential integrity of the system. Lower overall referential integrity decreases growth capability by requiring more application maintenance. Additionally, effective use of relational tables can ease the work process and influence the design of the HR organization (more on that in another post. So we’re not talking about the robustness of functionality. That’s important, but regardless of what tasks a system can do, how those tasks are performed is equally important.
I invite opinions to complete this discussion.
3 responses to “Scalability, Flexibility, Agility – Part 2”
Scalability, Flexibility, Agility – Part 2 By Systematic HR | Are these business requirements or technology requirements? Actually, they are both and indeed they are quite interconnected. Scalability from the technology side feeds scalability from the business side and the same can be said for
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[…] Scalability, Flexibility, Agility – Part 2 March 28, 2006 3:00am from systematicHR Are these business requirements or technology requirements? Actually, they are both and indeed they are quite interconnected. Scalability from the technology side feeds scalability from the business side and the same can be said for flexibility and agility. So while I?m not a network or software architect, I thought these were important ideas to bring […] [Read Entry] […]