help! advocacy resources needed fast

[Cameron Laird]

In article <mailman.1046819836.25704.python-list at python.org>,
Geoff Gerrietts  <geoff at gerrietts.net> wrote:
>I didn't think I was going to need to do this, but it looks like I
>might.
>
>Within the next couple days, the firm I work for is likely to be
>meeting to decide what we're doing in terms of technology change.
>We've been using Python, ILU,  and Zope for a long time as the
>backbone of our business. We're now talking about changing that, but
>we're trying to decide to what.
>
>The problem is, we're drowning under traffic, and we have very strong
>plans/deals/whatever going into place that will multiply that traffic.
>We need to start building now for that day.
>
>One of the guys who's been with the organization for a long time wants
>to go to a Java-based approach. The long term viability, he maintains,
>is better, and the short term boost in performance per box in the cage
>is also better.
>
>I could be persuaded to let Zope go -- it's nice, but it's not really
>a very good fit for our organization. And I welcome the day ILU is no
>longer part of our technology framework. But I quail at the thought of
>losing Python. 
>
>So I'm hunting for options, and hard facts (preferably with numbers
>attached).
>
>My current read is that Webware + Twisted, or mod_python + Twisted,
>would be the "fastest" web server platform python supports. Does
>anyone else have better numbers? Solid comparisons of any kind? I've
>got lots of anecdotal evidence I can point at, but very little in the
>way of hard numbers.
			.
			.
			.
Oh, my.

Planning is good.  Let me get this straight, though:  your
company will take a couple of days to make a strategic de-
cision on which it intends to base the next few years of its
future?  And a significant part of the decision rests on
"[o]ne of the guys ..."?  This feels unbalanced to me.

What operating system platforms are under consideration?

Java Web servers aren't particularly fast, in general, and
some of them are slow.  What Java does have going for it is
a lot of load-balancing and related "scaling" products.

Myself, I'd guess that mod_python will do you fine.

Do you have definite evidence that Zope is your bottleneck,
and not networking I/O or your upstream bandwidth or ...?
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://phaseit.net/claird/home.html