Most enterprise software architecture designs are made with the assumption that growth of the user and volume of data is also likely to be constrained. Architectural designs that worked well in the past often become the systems’ constraint when user numbers and data volumes and the complexity of transactions grow.
Aqlix works with enterprises that have outgrown their architectures. Through our application modernization services, we help enterprises rethink their systems and avoid growing pains before they become business risks.
Signs Your Software Architecture Is Struggling to Scale
Scaling issues become noticeable when the growth of a given enterprise begins to impact the business’s bottom line. When experiencing growing pains, enterprise leaders begin to feel the friction caused by constraints that previously did not cause any issues. Lack of friction often leads enterprise leaders to believe that potential scaling constraints do not exist.
1. Performance Degrades as User Load Increases
Applications that once responded instantly begin slowing down noticeably as more users, transactions, or data volume gets added to the system over time. This degradation often happens gradually, making it easy to dismiss individual instances as temporary glitches.
Left unaddressed, this pattern typically worsens as growth continues, eventually affecting customer experience and internal productivity significantly. Architecture built without scalability in mind rarely improves on its own as demand keeps climbing.
- Gradual response time increases: Performance issues that initially seemed minor will become more apparent as a growing user load places more requests.
- Inconsistent performance under peak load: Systems that are generally performant become noticeably performant during peak usage.
2. Small Changes Require Disproportionate Effort
In a healthy architecture, a feature or a bug fix should take roughly the amount of time dictated by its complexity. When a small change requires adjusting dozens of connected components, this is a clear sign that the architecture has become too tightly coupled.
This tightly coupled architecture dramatically increases the amount of time it takes to develop a feature, as engineers must determine how the change could affect other, seemingly unrelated, parts of the system. Teams often notice the length of time it takes to develop a feature increases even though the amount of work has not changed.
- Tightly coupled components: When one part of a system changes, it adversely affects other seemingly unrelated parts of the system.
- Longer release cycles: Simple updates that should take little time to complete now take a lot of time.
3. Infrastructure Costs Grow Faster Than the Business
If a system is built without considering efficient scale, more infrastructure must be added to accommodate growth, and each incremental growth requires a disproportionate amount of infrastructure. This quickly causes growing pains to the business as the costs associated with doing business increase while revenues do not keep pace.
This is usually the case and goes unnoticed until someone reviews spending on the infrastructure against growth of the business and determines spending does not correlate with growth. Poorly built systems that do not scale efficiently actually tax growth.
- Costs outpacing growth: Infrastructure spending increases faster than the revenue or usage actually driving that spending.
- Inefficient resource utilization: Poorly made systems require excess capacity in order to achieve even average performance.
Rethinking Architecture for Sustainable Growth
Fixing scaling problems requires more than just adding servers; often, the way the system is built requires rethinking. This doesn’t have to mean starting over. It requires intentional architectural design that pragmatically supports lasting scalability. The ideal system becomes easier to scale over time, rather than needing a system overhaul at every next growth milestone.
1. Moving Toward Modular, Decoupled Systems
To decouple a highly integrated system means building many, many subsystems of the system that can operate more or less autonomously. The evolution, maintenance, and scalability of each component are less constrained by the other components.
Aqlix’s Custom Software Development team is able to aid businesses in constructing systems that are designed for horizontal scaling without needing an extensive rebuild. This is done with significantly less risk compared to a traditional complete system rebuild.
- Independent component scaling: Each component can be scaled independent of the others based on its own demand without affecting the other components of the system.
- Reduced change risk: Changes to a single component will have significantly less impact on the rest of the system.
2. Designing for Horizontal Scalability
Horizontal scaling systems, which aim to use many low-performance systems in place of relying too heavily on a single high-performance system, generate considerably more long-term growth when compared to the alternatives.
With cloud and DevOps technologies, Aqlix develops architectural systems that scale horizontally without disrupting the business. Aqlix’s systems enable businesses to scale without the need for costly upgrades or disruptions.
- No hard scaling ceiling: Adding more machines doesn’t hit the physical or cost limitations of scaling one server only.
- Incremental capacity growth: The demand doesn’t require a large upfront investment because resources are added gradually as the demand grows.
3. Balancing Rearchitecture With Business Continuity
Core architecture rethinking can compromise how the business runs each day, and that is a big risk. Excellent design implements changes that are essential but, more importantly, ensures that the existing systems stay operational.
Aqlix’s Technology Consulting team assists clients by carefully sequencing these changes and focusing first on the systems that are the most critical and have the greatest impact on the business. This approach achieves the greatest reduction in stress on the business operations with the least risk of interruption.
- Prioritized change sequencing: The largest, most immediate impact is implemented first, instead of changes implemented all at once.
- Continuous operational stability: The existing systems maintain reliability during the transition in order to avoid disruptive business disruptions.
Conclusion
The need to continuously and deliberately think about how architecture will help scale a business without negatively impacting performance, cost, or development time is critical to sustaining a business in an increasingly competitive market.
Aqlix IT Solutions recognizes struggling architecture and addresses foundation problems to help facilitate sustainable scalability of your business. If you start to feel growing pains, contact Aqlix’s team to find out what aspects of your business might be causing a bottleneck.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my architecture is actually struggling to scale?
Signs include diminishing performance under load, requiring unreasonable effort for simple changes, and rapidly growing bills. Left unaddressed, these problems extemporaneously get worse.
Does fixing scaling problems always require a complete system rebuild?
Absolutely not. In fact, Aqlix almost never rebuilds systems all at once. More often than not, Aqlix slowly incrementally restructures systems to be more modular. The approach used largely depends on the system’s level of coupling.
What’s the difference between horizontal and vertical scaling?
Vertical scalability means adding more power to a single system. This type of scaling inevitably runs into the ceiling. Horizontal scalability means adding more systems. This type of scalability offers more effective incremental growth without the hard ceiling.
How risky is rearchitecting a system that’s already in production?
It is a significant risk if not done correctly, but the production system can still run, albeit with a more staged approach. Aqlix moves the most critical systems first in a more staged approach to rearchitect.
When should a business start addressing scaling concerns?
It is best practice to scale at the first signs of a growth imbalance, such as a spike in costs or loss of performance. If it is ignored, then the issues will grow to large proportions and will be much harder to resolve.
