Scalable Internet Architectures Quotes

“Understanding the scope of the problem and being able to step outside the current solution is essential to building efficient systems. The initial solution to a problem may be the entirely wrong approach to the problem as it evolves.”
― Theo Schlossnagle, Scalable Internet Architectures: Scalable Int Arch _p1

“I know two companies that collapsed due to the inability to reduce operating costs when the utilization of their sites diminished. The dot-com user base (of intangible monetary value based on registered users) did not grow and generate revenue as expected. There was a substantial number of loyal users, and both companies were able to redefine their business plans to turn a profit by catering solely to their loyal user base. However, the business plans required reducing operational costs, and due to countless bad application design decisions, the applications would not operate on architectures substantially smaller than the large-scale originals. Although the traffic and utilization of their architectures dropped to about 10% of the original goal, they were only able to realize a 20% reduction in operational costs.”
― Theo Schlossnagle, Scalable Internet Architectures: Scalable Int Arch _p1