Whitepaper : A User-centric, Collaborative, Holistic Philosophy of Tuning the Application Stack

Every application, every delivery system, every piece of intermediate hardware and software is ultimately going to be judged by how well it meets the needs of the end-users. This revelation should not surprise anyone. However, it is surprising how many times individual components are tuned and optimized with the assumption that the sum of optimized parts yields a streamlined whole.

It is just easier for teams to only worry about components that they control. Also, it is just easier for groups to ensure that they have a solid case that any problem must be outside of their area. But, that approach rarely works, because dissatisfied end-users blame everybody associated without respect to relative guilt. When issues impact the business, the consequences also frequently are felt by all as well.

All elements of the application stack are inextricably related to each other in how well they serve the end-users together. And the optimum design for each component considered independently can be counter-productive at worst and sub-optimal at best. Consequently, a holistic approach to all related parts of the application stack is necessary. Since different teams and organizations usually control and manage various components of the application stack; a collaborative approach is necessary to achieve the optimization of the whole system rather than the parts.