Jan Henry Nystrom <jan@erlang-consulting.com>
Training Manager @ Erlang Training and Consulting Ltd.
www.erlang-consulting.com
ABSTRACT 

Currently most distributed telecoms software is engineered using low-
and mid-level distributed technologies, but there is a drive to use
high-level distribution. This talk reports the first systematic
comparison of a high-level distributed programming language in the
context of substantial commercial products. 

The research clearly demonstrates that Erlang is not only a viable,
but also a compelling choice when dealing with high availability
system. This is due to the fact that it comparatively easy to
construct systems that are 
  - Resilient: sustaining throughput at extreme loads and
  automatically recovering when load drops.
  - Fault tolerant: remaining available despite repeated and
    multiple; failures.
  - Dynamically reconfigurable: with throughput
    scaling, near-linearly, when resources are added or removed. 

But most importantly these systems can be delivered at a much higher
productivity and with more maintainable deployed systems than current
technology. This is attributed to the language features such as 
automatic memory and process management and high-level communication. 
Furthermore Erlang interoperates at low cost with conventional
technologies, allowing incremental reengineering of large distributed
systems.