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Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

blog.heroku.com

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Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#4
It seems to me that Heroku is still failing to understand (or at least cop to) the fact that the switch from intelligent to randomized routing was a loss of a major reason people chose Heroku in the first place.

A lot of Heroku's apparent value came from the intelligent routing feature. Everybody knew that it was harder to implement than random routing, that's why they were willing to pay Heroku for it.

Nobody's arguing random routing isn't easier and more stable; of course it is.

The problem is that by switching over to it, Heroku gave up a major selling point of their platform. Are they really blind enough not to know this? I have a hard time believing that.

It seems to me the real way to make people happy is to discount the "base" products which come with random routing and make intelligent routing available as a premium feature. Of course, people who thought they were getting intelligent routing should be credited.

Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#5
post #3

This is a great response. I'm curious why something like this wasn't posted within 24 hours of RapGenius going public? I'd bet that a more thorough, technical reply would have mitigated a lot of the PR issues.

When admitting fault in response to a customer that spends 5 figures/month with you, wise to have a lawyer go over it first.

Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#6
post #3

This is a great response. I'm curious why something like this wasn't posted within 24 hours of RapGenius going public? I'd bet that a more thorough, technical reply would have mitigated a lot of the PR issues.

Agreed, I wish we could have done it much sooner. It took a shocking amount of time to sort through all the entangled issues, emotion, and speculation to try to get to the heart of the matter, which ultimately was about web performance and visibility.

Also, we wanted to respond to our customers first and foremost, and general community discussion second. So we spent close to a month on skype/hangout/phone with hundreds of customers understanding how and at what magnitude this affected their apps.

That was hugely time-consuming, but it gave us the confidence to speak about this in a manner that would be focused on customer needs instead of purely answering community speculation and theoretical discussions.

Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#7
post #4

It seems to me that Heroku is still failing to understand (or at least cop to) the fact that the switch from intelligent to randomized routing was a loss of a major reason people chose Heroku in the first place. A lot of Heroku's apparent value came from the intelligent routing feature. Everybody knew that it was harder to implement than random routing, that's why they were willing to pay Heroku for it. Nobody's argu…

Is anybody operating at Heroku's scale offering centralized request routing queues? At what price?

Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#9
post #3

This is a great response. I'm curious why something like this wasn't posted within 24 hours of RapGenius going public? I'd bet that a more thorough, technical reply would have mitigated a lot of the PR issues.

When admitting fault in response to a customer that spends 5 figures/month with you, wise to have a lawyer go over it first.

I would argue that the brand risk -- e.g. the risk of what ended up happening -- outweighs the legal risk.

That's not to say I wouldn't send it to a lawyer. But I'd do it with some hustle. Something like: "This is going out in 24 hours. Please comment ASAP!"

Re: Answering your questions about Heroku routing and web performance

#10
post #4

It seems to me that Heroku is still failing to understand (or at least cop to) the fact that the switch from intelligent to randomized routing was a loss of a major reason people chose Heroku in the first place. A lot of Heroku's apparent value came from the intelligent routing feature. Everybody knew that it was harder to implement than random routing, that's why they were willing to pay Heroku for it. Nobody's argu…

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