Art of Scalability, The: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise, 2nd Edition

Foreword

Perhaps your company began as a brick-and-mortar retailer, or an airline, or a financial services company.

A retailer creates (or buys) technology to coordinate and manage inventory, distribution, billing, and point of sale systems. An airline creates technology to manage the logistics involved in flights, crews, reservations, payment, and fleet maintenance. A financial services company creates technology to manage its customers’ assets and investments.

But over the past several years, almost all of these companies, as well as their counterparts in nearly every other industry, have realized that to remain competitive, they need to take their use of technology to an entirely different level—they now need to engage directly with their ...