Working on a proposal for a customer I find myself with the task of finding out what is the most appropriate scalable solution for a consumer web application that could possibly go to million users easily while maintaining the development cost from skyrocketing.  On the one hand, the LAMP architecture has shown that is scalable, as per the well know documented examples of LinkedIn and Facebook.  Plus, there is no licensing to worry about when it comes to the basic components of the architecture. However, almost every piece of the functionality in that stack would have to be written from scratch and the horizontal scaling requires a lot of upkeep with mostly manual tools built almost with bare hands.

On the other hand Java technologies have developed tremendously in the last few years and in terms of processing speed and development frameworks there is almost no comparison (maybe except for .Net) However, the cost in this scenario is on the licenses for the application server and support. This only if one wants to ensure that when the rubber meets the road (like when the application server is not behaving as expected) the vendor in question will step to the plate to support your application.  This is a though decision to make but doable with today’s knowledge pool and development communities. I will keep pondering and formulating scenarios…Any thoughts on this?

I found this great video from ZDNet where Vince Cesarez, VP of Product Management at Oracle explains simply and clearly some of the tools that create what we call Enterprise 2.0 and what pains these technologies address for the business. Great short video. Enjoy!

Enterprise portals are today key pieces of IT infrastructure that deliver systems integration reducing the level of complexity for end users. However, deploying and ongoing maintenance of these portals requires not only technology skills but also business process and quality continuous improvement processes to ensure ROI.

Here is a link to an article we got published at IBM.com/Developerworks website in May 2007:

Creating a new portal: Part 6. Administering and maintaining the portal

Portals require care and feeding at least as much as other applications do

Summary: This last part in the series Creating a new portal describes the ongoing support and administration of a portal, including the need for specific team members and their roles. It discusses the skills and training that should be developed before your portal goes live, how to harden the performance of your portal, and issues you might face with the deployment and governance of your production system.