Scalable Products: Why, When, and How to Scale Your Digital Product?

Do you know what the global edtech and smart classroom market size was in 2022? No idea? Then, we must inform you that it was somewhere around USD 115.80 billion, which is estimated to grow from USD 133.55 billion in 2023 to USD 433.17 billion in 2030. Yes, you read that right! And among all the contributors to these numbers, Physics Wallah has been a well-known name. But did you know that there was a time when this edtech brand launched its app for the first time, and it crashed because a myriad of authorized users logged into the application simultaneously? In short, the concerned app failed to meet the growing demand of users due to its poor performance, scalability, and resilience, resulting in a huge loss to the business. Now, if you don’t want to experience the same by hook or by crook, you must rely on scalable digital products. 

Yes, only when you do that will you be able to develop a powerful digital product that can survive and thrive in the market easily. But the query pops up: what are scalable products, and why should you use them? Well, to get a good sense of that, you will have to browse through the next text stack.

What Do You Mean By Scalable Products?

These products generally refer to the ability of a software application to handle the upsurging demand, complexity, or use of the mobile program without affecting its quality, performance, and functionality. Product scalability is one of the key factors that determines the success and growth of any virtual application out there.

Since not all digital products are good at scalability, a stunning survey by a business-focused media organization has found that only 8% of agencies succeed in scaling during their operation.  

Can You Give Some Examples of Scalable Digital Products?

A case in point here is that John Young has showcased the RS/6000 SP operating system as a scalable system in one of his books named “ Exploring IBM’s New-Age Mainframes.” But why? You might want to know. Well, it is because of the ability of RS/6000 SP to retain performance levels even after adding extra processors. 

Another example of scalable products on this list is scalable fonts. Yes, you heard that right! In the printing domain, scalable fonts can be resized effortlessly depending on the requirement without losing their quality. 

With that over, it is time to grasp imperative information about:

Why Should You Focus On Product Scalability?

Honestly speaking, if you wish to grow and fulfill the increasing demands of your users while staying competitive in the market, it makes sense to make your product extensible. Let’s delve deep into the details:

Meet Growing Demand

Horizontal scaling lets you connect a higher number of devices or servers to your existing infrastructure in order to cope with the increased traffic and allocate the load evenly. On the other hand, vertical scaling concentrates on upgrading current hardware to better performance and potential during scalable product creation.    

Improve Performance And Reliability

By taking the plunge to distribute the workload across various servers or implement load balancing techniques, it becomes a breeze to:

1. Minimize latency 
2. Manage peak loads efficiently 
3. Guarantee a seamless user experience 

Perform Effective Capacity Planning

Some industry experts say that when you have scalable digital products at your disposal, the chances are high that you can precisely anticipate resource requirements and distribute them accordingly to ensure excellent performance and steer clear of overprovisioning or underutilizing resources.     

Thus, if you are willing to fabricate a mobile app that can grow with your business down the road, you must have a casual conversation with the dedicated representatives of a top IT service provider that delivers promising app development services. 

When Should You Build Scalable Products?

Being a responsible app owner, it is necessary to sell your offerings and live up to the expectations of your consumers in terms of features and performance. Although product scalability was not your priority years ago, it is the need of the hour to scale your deliverables to support its growth. And one of the clear signs of the need to extend your product is when its performance starts deteriorating. 

For instance, a software application might show a degraded performance when a battery of users begins using it at the same time. That’s when you need to take a look at key metrics, such as:

1. Memory utilization 
2. CPU usage 
3. Disk I/O
4. Network I/O

If any of them needs further improvement to take care of the increased load, you must fulfill the same. What else? Some industry specialists suggest analyzing wads of indications proactively to figure out when to proceed with product scalability and when not. By doing this, you won’t have to wait for your app performance to drop big time. Instead, you will be able to optimize the same before time. 

Beyond this, you can ask yourself a few important questions:

1. Do you have a business value to deliver to a massive consumer base? If so, there is plenty of scope for your business to grow, and you should invest adequately in your product scalability.
2. Have you built an outstanding product already? Did you receive the feedback of your desired market that confirms you have a superb product? If the answer is yes, do not hesitate to expand your product. 

Please remember that forming scalable apps is not everyone’s cup of tea. And if you can’t forge a scalable application properly, you can’t expect to achieve aggressive growth and generate considerable revenue in the future. Perhaps this is the reason why a popular insight-delivering firm has found in its research that less than 0.01% of all customer-based mobile programs had an opportunity to become financially successful in 2018. 

Finally, it is time to discuss the most awaited topic in this write-up, i.e.,

How To Carry out the Entire Product Scalability Task

Make the Most of Customer Feedback and Data Collection 

Quantitative analytics and research are two impeccable methods to collect buyer feedback that can make you aware of a successful expansion plan. By paying attention to their responses, you can learn which functionalities to add to your scalable products next and then optimize and retest. With such a plan at your disposal, you can rest assured that your application will keep evolving and adapting to market demands in the time to come. 

For example, it will help if you gather actual data from users when they use your software during the MVP stage. Keeping track of user behavior, user journey, drop-off, and interactions at every touchpoint can help you recognize functionalities that can be improved, added, or deleted from scalable digital products when moving from the MVP stage to the complete launch.

Be mindful that it is necessary to go through all the positive and negative comments and find a way to address them. Wondering why? Well, it is unsatisfied clients who will highlight the issues in your app that you can sort out when shifting from the MVP stage to full-fledged scalable product development. And in case you need some sort of technical assistance to create a scalable application, you can always count on a trusted IT service provider on the cloud with expertise in software development services.    

Choose the Correct Database Engine 

The next thing you must do is pick the most appropriate database engine and create an exceptional plan or model to ensure your product scalability takes place without any hassle. Hence, when the demand boosts, you will be prepared to process a sizeable number of transactions using this approach easily.   

Keep in mind that replicating your database could be the perfect idea when your web app scales. And just to let you know, this replication process entails imitating the database so that its several copies exist, and each one can look after a subset of the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) tasks. It is an accepted practice in the industry to divide the read and write operations of the databases when creating scalable digital products.      

Put APIs First 

You might not believe this, but the truth is that the advent of API-first software architecture has been one of the most useful innovations in the field of software design. Earlier, APIs were manufactured as an afterthought to existing applications and were complicated, too. Nowadays, an API-first design actually separates them from the beginning, allowing teams to quickly build experiences and products compatible with several endpoints. The API-first methodology insists on tapping Application Programming Interfaces to join all platform parts and transfer crucial data between them when making scalable products.  

Call on Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery 

Just like Agile soars productivity, CI/CD procedures take the same to an even better level, ensuring rapid release of scalable digital products with fewer issues. The key is the large-scale adoption of continuous automation throughout all stages of development, which results in a more streamlined and consistent development of code. 

This is something that acts as an imperative process when looking to integrate new functionalities or execute product scalability tasks. You might have seen many software developers working in parallel these days on web app development projects, which takes productivity to the next level and also boosts the likelihood of bugs. If this happens, you will have to spend an enormous amount of time bringing together different pieces of the program that have been constructed by different developers out there. However, the good news is that this trouble is being fixed with the help of CI/CD tools. 

Now that you have wrapped your mind well around the right method to scale a digital product, it is time to get down to the last but most important topic from our point of view, i.e., 

What Is the Cost of the Entire Digital Transformation Project?

Just so you know, each transformation project is unique and different. The total cost to develop fully scalable digital products will vary depending on the following:

1. Your organization 
2. Its industry 
3. The type of transformation required 
4. A wide variety of other factors

According to a premier online knowledge resource focused on the CXO, the average digital transformation project can set you back by $27.5 million based on a 2020 report. If you want to get the hang of the expenditure required to work on your specific product scalability task, it is a wise decision to connect to the most knowledgeable executive of a renowned IT service-providing agency. 

The Rundown

So far, you have come to know how imperative it is to make your product scalable as time goes by. Right? Because with every passing day, the needs, preferences, and expectations of patrons keep changing. If you are in the market to provide them with the best possible product or service, you also need to ensure that they can access the same anytime and from anywhere they like. But to guarantee the same, you will have to come up with completely scalable digital products that can cater to hundreds of thousands of consumers at the same time. For that, it is advisable to collaborate with a well-established IT solution provider now that has a specialization in scalable product construction.