Trading Something In for an Increased Availability
 
Author: Daniel Richter 

One way to increase the availability – the readiness for and continuity of correct service – of an IT system instead of rely on highly-available infrastructure and fault-free components is to question whether you can trade something in for it – like strong consistency guarantees, service quality, preciseness, or even correctness. Exemplary implementation methods are relaxed consistency guarantees (data level) or the use of flexible, imprecise, and resilient computing (algorithm level).