There are reasons why websites get big, great stories about blogs and viral digital sensations that ripple the internet.  What happens when it’s your site and as all to common it starts to bend then break under load?

Your great story becomes a story of ooops and sorry instead of global reach.  This is where good architecture and smart proxy caching comes in.

There are many components of a large corporate online presence, legacy content and pre-existing data, processes and expectations.  Good solutions leverage the strengths of the past without getting hung up in details, prototype better ways that are inline with the people who are actually using these systems.

When it all comes together in the public space, it better be rock – solid and have the ability to spread the message to hundreds of thousands if not millions of visitors without a blip in terms of performance and up time.  Varnish cache is a technology that sits in front of your web stack for example that makes it ‘slick’ and able to handle a huge volume of requests.

Configuring website caching, replication and proxy is probably the most important factor in scaling a website by today’s standards.

Content distribution networks are essential for any business serving  international clients, they have to work with any existing caching as well as content management processes within the enterprise.

The key strategy is to seek a comfortable balance between people’s workflow in delivering content and how that content gets updated to visitors from around the globe.

Stakeholders need to be kept in the loop right from the start, and have their feedback included in revisions when IT activity may be affecting their current job.