A Case for an Investment Trade-Off between Software and Hardware

摘要

This paper presents a case study for the software improvement process. Although the software evaluation depends on many factors, the response tiem was taken as the critical one. In the case described, the response time of a software release had deteriorated with the increase of_the number of simultaneous users. There were two possibilities to overcome this problem. The first one would be based upon an investment in hardware. The second one was chosen which has led to a software redesign. It has resutled in lower costs thn an equivalent hardware upgrade. The achieved results were measured in a real time environment. The redesign efficiency is illustrated by comparing the measured values of the response time before and after the described actions have been taken. The presented experience might be interesting for developers of typical on-line applications, where the response time plays a significant role.