SOFTWARE SCALABILITY: HOW TO EASILY GROW YOUR BUSINESS

The majority of contemporary software firms start with an MVP, or minimum viable product, which only has the essential functionalities. MVP makes sense for a quick start because it shortens the time to market and prevents significant expenditures before you know whether everything will work out.

Even yet, let’s assume your MVP was a success. Your customers would now highly value it, and your startup would no longer be considered one. You can now hire a custom software development outsourcing company and use its assistance to give your app or website new features. Naturally, it will attract new clients; otherwise, why would you bother? Scalability changes the game since scaling means expanding.

What is scalability in software development?

Scalability, to put it simply, demonstrates how easy your product can expand and alter in response to your company’s needs. Scalability of software products typically refers to an application’s or website’s functionality. By scaling your software, you enable it to handle more data and continue operating normally even when numerous users are accessing it simultaneously.

A straightforward illustration from a non-IT industry: a business selling garments has grown its customer base and reached considerably. It found out that there was a very strong demand, therefore the brand decided to increase production in order to increase sales. When scaling, more employees may be needed to serve a huge consumer base.

Businesses in the software industry are thought to be more scalable since, after software, like a mobile app, has been produced and deployed, the business is completed with significant expenditures. However, if the product doesn’t make advantage of technologies that enable it to remain nimble, software scalability may still become a problem.

As an illustration, let’s say that you manage an eCommerce business and have chosen to begin a very successful marketing initiative. You anticipate that this campaign will result in two or perhaps 10 times the amount of traffic compared to before. Your server isn’t built for that kind of capacity, though. What will occur? When all the interested customers rush off to check out your store, your website or app will simply crash.

Scalability types

When we talk about scalability in software development, we’re talking about how to strengthen your systems. Developers can do it in one of two ways: vertically or horizontally.

Vertical Scaling: Not the program, but your server must be scaled. You concentrate on giving your server greater power so it can handle higher amounts of data while leaving the app’s or website’s code intact. You need to upgrade the server’s RAM or CPU in order to scale vertically.
Horizontal Scaling: You separate your software into many components and store them on various servers. As a result, you modify the code and add more hardware to handle heavier demands.

Should I increase my scale?

Recall the example of the garment company? A shop like that could aspire to grow, but it might also succeed as a small business. To put it another way, not every firm needs to be scalable. But scalability is typically required for a successful software business. Scaling is continuously fueled by new technology, evolving client needs, and a growing customer base. Choosing the appropriate moment to take action is crucial in this situation.

You are ready to scale when:

Your company has a stable income; it overcame a startup stage, doesn’t suffer from a lack of budget, and you are sure of the customers’ flow. Of course, you must know it for sure, so take your time to track and monitor data;
Your customers have new demands. In the IT-related business, it usually means increasing traffic: for instance, when there are Black Friday or Easter sales;
Your MVP was warmly greeted in the market and became a demanded product. You plan to add new features and expect new customers so that scaling will become a must soon. For instance, you launched a car rental app and decided to introduce a referral program so that your existing customers would engage the new ones;
You faced the first issues with your product. Suppose your app worked perfectly fine when browsed by ten customers at once. However, it started suffering from lags and crashes when the traffic increased.

How can I be certain that my product is scalable?

The safest choice, as we’ve already indicated, is to think about scaling right away. Fortunately, new technologies enable you to quickly design software that is ready for modifications whenever you need them. Here are the crucial topics you should go over with your in-house development team or bespoke software development company before you get started.

Choose the right stack

Your company’s needs will determine the best course of action. Here are the top scalability trends you can address with your team if you are not very knowledgeable about software development:

Cross-platform development instead of the native development for mobile apps;
React and Angular frameworks for frontend development;
Node.js for enterprise-scale apps that need to manage large amounts of data at once.

Make sure the outsourcing team is aware of your current and future needs if you entrust development, including technical requirements, to them. These requirements might relate, for instance, to the anticipated number of users of your product or the volume of data you keep.

Cloud microservices architecture

When you opt for cloud infrastructures, you kill two birds with one stone:

enable adding new features and performing seamless updates very quickly;
boost the reliability of the site or app’s performance.

Microservices are made up of numerous little elements as opposed to monolithic design, which indicates that all of your software is one unit and cannot function separately. As a result, you don’t need to modify the infrastructure when one of the microservices needs an upgrade. Instead, you can alter each part of such an infrastructure separately, even using a different language or stack for each one.

Additionally, cloud solutions let you expand your software, as well as contract it if that suits your needs right now better.

How we can help

Feeling motivated to expand your internal team, scale your software, and create new features for your product? We’re prepared to support you and offer you IT staff augmentation services. Why does that matter? The two choices are as follows:

extend your in-house team: when your staff needs help;
hire Omimek dedicated team: when you need to hire a fully set team.

Most of the time, we can have a team assembled for you within two to three weeks. Of course, the timeline is determined by the demands of your company and the complexity of your product.

How soon can we augment a dedicated team? The contract implies we have 30 days for it. However, we usually manage it quicker: from 2 to 3 weeks.

If you have any questions, you can contact our experts by +2347041944295 +2349168848255 or by email.