As businesses look to move from scalability to hyperscalability, the effort and implementation process are often overlooked as key considerations. If scaling is still resource intensive, hyperscalability remains unattainable.
Automation is available to businesses of all sizes and is one of the components that reduces the barriers to hyper-scalability. Automation allows businesses to meet significantly increased demand without sacrificing performance or incurring prohibitive costs in scaling human, technical, and resources.
How Automation Drives Hyperscalability
Enhancing efficient resource management is one of the key benefits that automation brings to a hyper-scalable solution, as resource efficiency is at the core of scalability. As businesses strive to achieve the next level of productivity and profitability, it is paramount that resources are available when needs increase and are not wasted when needs decrease.
Automatic resource allocation and scaling enables businesses to dynamically provision and allocate resources such as network bandwidth, storage capacity, and server capabilities to meet demand. For example, a gaming platform rolling out an upgrade can dynamically scale server capacity as needs change, ensuring optimal performance and a satisfying customer experience.
Automation can also play a key role in managing workload distribution to support scaling. For example, an AI-driven platform can dynamically assess resource needs and allocate processes to additional resources to avoid overload and maximize performance. As systems fail or fall below acceptable performance levels, automated systems can identify those issues in real time and facilitate reallocation or acquisition of additional resources.
By reducing the need for human involvement in the scaling process, scaling can be accomplished much faster and more reliably. Systems that rely on automated and validated processes avoid downtime and performance issues that can occur due to human error.
Each of these elements increases business agility and flexibility, which are fundamental elements of hyperscalability. Automated workflows enable businesses to switch systems more quickly and reliably.
How automation can address security risks
Hyperscalability offers the potential for efficiency gains for businesses of all sizes, but it also brings security risks. Leveraging automation in the hyperscaling process helps ensure security as systems scale.
Increased complexity is one of the factors inherent in hyperscaling that leads to increased security risks: as systems grow, the attack surface expands, and each added component adds additional potential vulnerabilities that must be considered and secured against.
As the size of a system increases, so does the risk of misconfiguration. Recent studies have shown that misconfiguration can be very Common Attack VectorsIt accounts for 11% of attacks on cloud infrastructure – only phishing and stolen or compromised credentials are more common.
The main benefit of automation from a security perspective is the potential reduction in risks posed by human involvement, and statistics show that: human error 74% of cybersecurity breaches involve humans. The risk of the most common types of breaches can be significantly reduced by implementing automation that reduces human reliance, especially in security-related processes.
Automating routine security and scaling tasks, including processes such as installing security patches and adjusting scaling limits, is the first step in mitigating risk. Automated processes ensure that these tasks are performed accurately and in a timely manner.
Infrastructure as CodeIACC) is another component of automation that reduces security risks. IaC eliminates the need to manually configure network components by defining the provisioning and deployment process through coding. From a scaling perspective, IaC reduces the time required to make configuration changes and, as a result, the time required to adjust resource capabilities.
From a security perspective, IaC removes human involvement and the potential for human error from the provisioning equation. IaC automatically manages security and other critical updates, essentially creating a complete zero trust environment.
Automation can also significantly reduce the risks of: Social Engineering Planis believed to be responsible for 90% of cyber attacks. As automation increases, the need for human intervention decreases and less authentication is required into the system, reducing the number of potential entry points into the system and reducing the risk of social engineering.
Hyperscalability has emerged as an effective strategy for businesses looking to gain a competitive advantage, but automation is what makes it feasible for businesses of all sizes. By adopting proven methodologies that enhance agility and flexibility while providing security, businesses can take advantage of hyperscalability to capture and capitalize on new opportunities to drive revenue and growth.
