Outlyer is a SaaS infrastructure monitoring tool. We process and store time-series data, which is currently at 100K points per second and growing.

To do the grunt work of processing and storing the growing mass of data, we originally started out with Node.JS—quick to build and time-saving. About a year into using it, we started to reach the limits of Node, so we began to investigate a more appropriate technology. We looked closely at several options, including Java, Scala, Go, Erlang and C.

This talk will tell you when and why you should choose Erlang over other options, but also tell you when not to choose it.