Distributed Computing, the CAP Theorem, and How to Improve System Architectures

Lots of companies - especially in the non-startup world - are starting to look closely at upgrading their legacy systems to the "next generation" - services, scalability, NoSQL, etc. Most of these systems have existed, in some form or fashion, for decades and are beginning to impede the business' ability to handle new customer demands - especially around time-to-market and ultra-slow workloads that are experiencing poor performance.

Whether you are creating a new, distributed, architecture or simply improving an existing slow process, there are complexity concerns that you will have to deal with. It's better to understand these issues up-front and make accommodations for them before you get blindsided in the middle of a long-term project.

In the talk below, Nathan and I discussed some of the basics around distributed computing, architecture, and storage and introduce some of the issues and constraints around creating the next-generation architecture for your organization that will sustain you through the next decade.