"Scalable software doesn’t blink when you add 10 users, doesn’t slow when you add 200,000 records, and won’t crash when you request from NSK 20 more features than it is currently doing."

Sometimes, “enterprise” software is simply software that has enough features for a large business. Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise is feature-filled. An average developer, faced with the challenge of writing a complex application, may believe “enterprise” means complex. But to a good developer, “enterprise” simply means “scalable”. Software which scales, expands as it is required to do so.

Enterprise means that when you program good user security on a database in accounting, and then put a similar database in another department, the two will be able to talk to one another, while still using that good security (instead of, in spite of that security).

Enterprise means that “3/14/2008” means “March 14” in New York, yet won’t crash a server in London because there’s no third day of the 14th month. Truly Enterprise software requires very high quality architecture—it needs a careful design, which is documented, and which has been well considered. Software which is architected, or designed, to be scalable, has three very important features.

Scalable software can talk to other software easily. Scalable software can be expanded easily. And scalable software is faster than it needs to be, or as fast as is presently possible with technology. Almost all the big buzzwords in business technology have to do with scalability.

Written by Keith Mitchell, Senior Developer at NSKinc