Upgrading to Node v8 has significantly reduced our operating costs

Ably Realtime, a distributed pub/sub messaging platform, has realized significant performance improvements and cost savings by upgrading its core routing and front-end layers from Node.js v6 to v8, taking advantage of enhancements in Google's V8 JavaScript engine. This upgrade has led to more consistent performance under load, reduced server costs by approximately 40%, and demonstrated the value of selecting technologies backed by strong community support and continuous performance optimization, such as gRPC, Cassandra, and Golang. Despite some initial hesitation due to the need for stability and 100% uptime, the gradual and careful adoption of Node.js v8 has proven beneficial, underscoring the strategic decision to invest in well-supported open-source projects. This approach allows Ably to focus on revenue growth while still benefiting from performance improvements without significant engineering efforts.