Scalability
Noun · Startup & VC
Definitions
The ability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources. In startup pitch decks, it's the claim that your business can grow 100x without costs growing 100x. In engineering, it's the problem you solve when the pitch deck turns out to be right.
In plain English: How well a system can handle growth — a scalable app can serve a million users as easily as a thousand, without rebuilding everything.
Etymology
- 1970s
- Computer scientists begin using 'scalable' to describe systems that handle increasing load gracefully
- 2000s
- The web scaling era makes scalability a primary design concern — Twitter's fail whale becomes the icon of scaling problems
- 2010s
- Cloud auto-scaling and microservices make scalability an architectural pattern rather than a hardware purchase