One of the often-repeated baseball truisms is "that you can never have too much pitching". Even if you don't know anything about baseball, you can tell that this is true by just searching on that phrase and see what comes up. Go ahead: I've made it easy!

(for the non-baseball folks out there Bob Gibson is one of the absolute all-time greats, a pitcher's pitcher ... every baseball team that ever was or ever will be would love to have Mr. Gibson on their team)

Simplicity Really Matters

In the world of scalable applications there is a rule above all rules - simplicity really matters. Or in tribute to the tattered, yet still great game of baseball, "you can never have too much simplicity".

You can say this many different ways, but the reality is that in order to really build scalable systems we must strive for the simplest abstractions possible.

For a minute I thought I was reading one of our new marketing pieces (I wasn't) ... Nikita Ivanov seems to be all over the "scalability simplified" theme. Of course I agree with his basic point, but there's more to the story of course.

Making It Real

Even Ivanov's jab at Nati Shalom illustrated an underlying reality, ignored all too often - enabling a simple world can be complicated. Of course any complexity needs to be supporting an elegantly simple abstraction, such as the one we present. The problems arise when that complexity is exposed, as it is in the vast majority of computing architectures.

In any case, just arguing for development simplicity (while commendable) isn't enough. After all, somebody has to deploy and operate what you build.

The Whole Story

So yes we must deliver simplicity to the developer ... that is a key for enabling scalable applications. But don't forget the other two legs to this stool:

• Operational Simplicity. The biggest fabrics (or grids) absolutely must be at least as simple to operate as a single server ... no matter how big they get.
• Reliability. A fabric must be able to simply ensure the reliability of each operation - this is crucial for being able to rely on commodity infrastructure.

Taken together (development simplicity, reliability, and operational simplicity), then you have an approach that's meaningful. That is exactly what people are discovering with application fabrics.

Go 'git me some of that simplicity!