Time To Slow Down? International Tech Considerations

Posted: Sep 15 2017, 5:04am CDT | by , in News

Time To Slow Down? International Tech Considerations
Time To Slow Down? International Tech Considerations

Why A Broad Market Needs Slower Tech Options



Everyone hates a connectivity slowdown, but for those of us in major urban areas in the United States, we can assume that it’s a temporary situation and things will pick up soon. But recently, China was ranked 134th out of 189 countries tested. That places China slightly behind India, Haiti, and Iran while just marginally faster than Mauritania.

What does this mean on a larger scale? It means that while most digital services are emphasizing speed of delivery and trying to get faster and faster, being slower might actually be an advantage. There are billions of internet users functioning with rock bottom speeds; trying to push applications across those connections too quickly can make them impossible to use.

Application Performance – A Primer

It’s a basic concept: if there are no roads, cars can’t get from point A to point B. The same applies to the Internet. If there isn’t enough bandwidth to deliver an application smoothly, it will perform poorly and suffer countless interruptions. This happens a lot in countries like China and India, growing business hubs, because there are insufficient resources to support digital applications.

In better resourced areas, recipient companies and developers can work together to increase available resources and smooth application delivery. By using a server and application monitor, companies can clearly identify performance bottlenecks, reduce downtime, and redistribute resources to save money. When delivering an application to widespread areas with limited resources, though, the answer is not necessarily to try to boost resources but to slow down delivery to match local capacity.

Opting to slow down is counterintuitive for Internet Age companies, but it’s precisely what some are doing right now. Done correctly, slowing down can actually speed things up.

Slow And Slim Application Alternatives

What does it look like to slow down in practice? Google is testing a lite search app with plans for an initial launch in Indonesia, an area also affected by slow internet connectivity. The app is similar to a lite version of YouTube the company released in India in 2016. Across its collected properties, Google has been rolling out these pared back apps to positive reviews.

What makes lite apps work so well in areas with slow internet is that they simplify delivery for mobile use and reduce interdependencies, allowing data to flow more directly from the start of an operation to the end. This isn’t necessarily a serious change for simple operations, but for multi-layered ones, cutting out intermediate steps or trimming added options is a game changer.

Ultimately, some operations will always be easier to condense than others and localizing data storage will always be more effective than slimming down the application, but lite versions allow companies to adapt. Other issues, though, sit firmly at the end-point. China, for example, will always be harder to reach from a service perspective because of the countrywide firewall protections. This isn’t something service providers can resolve on their own.

Without global infrastructural changes and an increase in international cooperation, slowing down is the best solution we have right now for improved application delivery. More companies need to consider developing a secondary version of their applications for target populations to improve performance or will suffer the consequences in terms of speed, accuracy, and cost.

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The Author

<a href="/latest_stories/all/all/68" rel="author">Larry Alton</a>




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