Scaling of Apps in COVID -19
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Let us be straightforward about it…

Until a vaccine is in place, it would be difficult to bat away the virus of COVID -19 completely. Until then, humans and businesses need to go about their businesses with resilience and positivity. Companies, especially, have to think about whether to scale up or scale down their operations.

If you’re involved in food delivery, logistics, or online learning, you’re likely thinking about how to scale your applications. Many consumers are flocking to online stores and apps to make purchases and place delivery orders. This surge in demand has stressed applications, causing outages and other problems. In short, businesses are having a tough time scaling their applications.

If your company is witnessing an unprecedented increase in business and application load, all that you can do is scale up your applications.

Now the question is: How to scale mobile app solutions the right way?

Before we answer that question, let’s first understand what scalability is?

As simple as it means, scalability is the app’s capacity to be flexible enough to take on the extra load. Read the e-book “Ultimate formula for building scalable web apps” to gather in-depth ideas on scalability.”

In terms of mobile app solutions, scalability could be considered in two senses:

  • Increasing customer base and the app’s ability to manage volume
  • Hardware infrastructure and code’s flexibility to hold up future innovation

Your app may be innovative and all, but if it is unable to adapt and grow, you will not be able to go to the next level. And, God forbid, if your app crashes, your sales will go downhill as you won’t be able to cater to tens of thousands of customers who are visiting your website at the same time.

Leverage Legacy Code

As it turns out, legacy code could be written by a developer during the app launch. When you need to scale it, you need to take it up a notch by adding extra functionalities. The only thing you need to take care of is that the developer, who handles the legacy code unless it’s one who wrote the legacy code, understands it inside out. Only then will they be able to add to the app’s functionalities without going for an overhaul of the pre-existing code.

The difference between a successful app and a not-so-successful app is not creativity or talent, but the ability to design it with the future in mind.

Kubernetes – To handle 10X increase in Spikes

One can even try Kubernetes because the open-source container-orchestration system is really picking up right now. It’s a perfect fit when you need to scale your app massively. Retailers and gaming platforms keep re-designing their applications to accommodate spikes, but the sort of spike, resulting from the pandemic, was unprecedented.

With Kubernetes, you could handle 10X more spikes overnight by adding more servers and scaling out your Kubernetes cluster. I think that is a huge plus for Kubernetes when applied to the right types of projects.

Many businesses are in “wait and watch” mode to see how Covid-19 would be impacting the overall economy. But there are three types of companies that are witnessing huge, rapid scaling such as retail companies, gaming companies, and data analytics. And Kubernetes is that it’s a scale-out model.

So you don’t have to re-architect the application to meet the demand. Adding more servers will serve the purpose.

Apache Ignite – To support 10X to 1000x increases in queries and transaction volumes

Apache Ignite is an in-memory computing platform that adds speed and scalability to existing and new applications. Even before the onset of COVID-19 crises, companies that were into the web, mobile, social, and IoT technologies used to experience ten to1000x inquiries and transactions. This led to the creation of a host of new data sources about end-users and business. 50 x explosions of data volumes over the last ten years reflects the contribution of modern technologies for modern enterprises. So, dissecting the inquiries, transactions, and data took hours or even days to complete. No more!

Thanks to Apache Ignite’s in-memory computing, now, it’s not easy for companies to support 10X to 1000x increases in queries and transaction volumes, and even take advantage of 50x data for decision making; not to mention complete everything in fractions of seconds.

In-memory computing is what adds speed and scalability to existing and new applications. The speed is because of storing and processing data in memory rather than retrieving data from the disk for processing. Scalability comes from distributing data and computing together across a cluster of servers.

Ideally, the scaling option should be available in an app right from the beginning. This will help future proof your app for success. However, make sure the app’s scalability should be by the users’ expectations and the investors. And, it’s always nice to collaborate with an experienced team who’ll be able to suggest the right scalable tech stack and work toward making ideas into reality.