What does she prefer? Finishing her ice-cream till the very end (and - why not? - expecting a second one) or leaving some room for a reasonable dinner?
What would you prefer? Having a chance to arrive at the office in a record time or be safe and relax for your morning business review?
Optimize versus Maximize is a question that arises in most of the situations we live: family, business, industry, wildlife, etc. Fine tuning the delicate relation between these two close notions is at the core of multi criteria challenges that we daily face, as soon as external constraints (time, space, money, law, demography, natural resources…) oppose to our primary goal.
In aquaculture, maximizing fish growth is the main goal, but this must be achieved through optimizing cost of feed, labor, time, health, filtration among many other parameters of premiere importance.
In the famous car race "Le Mans 24 Hours", technical teams strive to maximize their top speed in the Hunaudières straight (ready for a tour?) and get a fair chance to win the race. On the other hand they also need to optimize their strategy and balance between speed, reliability, pit stops and pilots' tiredness, as the unusual race length will overstep classical limits.
100 million years ago, life evolution maximized Dinosaurs' size, strength and appetite. It did not optimize their ability to adapt to a fast changing environment – sadly for them, happily enough for our mammal ancestors.
Maximization has the beauty of a single, simple goal. It is usually meaningful in a (relatively) short term purpose, where we do not have to care too much about other criteria. It often goes along with some gambling mindset: when someone wants to maximize his profit, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and Wall Street are good places for a stay.
In the same situation, optimization appears as a most complex grail as it takes into account many criteria at the same time. It is normally associated with a longer term vision, where stability and predictability matter. Optimizing your family incomes and being reasonably sure to be able to pay for your kids' high school will require more than roulette and black-jack.
Concerning application delivery over enterprise networks, we often read about WAN optimization and application acceleration. Even distorted by the magic effect of b……t marketing, words are still able to carry some underlying reality: the desire for speed and the need of certainty.
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