Reading/FY2016-2017 Architecture Needs

The WMF fiscal year 2016-2017 (FY16-17) starts July 1, 2016 and ends June 30, 2017.

What shape does the architecture Reading wants take on for FY16-17? Granted, strategy processes are in flight, but based on what information exists today and looking into the crystal ball what do we think?

Please sub-bullet comment inline with the customary MediaWiki signature. If there are additional areas we really need to think hard about, please add a new bullet.

More specifically:
 * Do we plan to begin the migration to a Node.js server side composited experience with distinct page components or do we instead plan to do most web things exclusively in MediaWiki PHP?
 * Do we anticipate creation of more RESTbase microservices (e.g., aggregators or what roughly amount to versioned proxies to ensure backward compatibility) or do we anticipate defining canonicalized shared URL formats (less likely alternative: edge side canonicalizer) and using smaxage for scaling for api.php endpoints?
 * On the Android team we're finding the Node.js/REST API approach really promising and we'd keep moving forward in this area with additional (micro)services (e.g., for thumbnails, related pages...) MHolloway (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * On iOS we will be looking into services for feed related work - and may (will) involve other teams. So its not clear whether this will be Node - but its likely. CFloyd (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
 * How much do we foresee a need to grow the memcached object pool?
 * How much do we foresee a need to grow the Varnish object pool?
 * How much do we foresee a need to grow the Cassandra object pool?
 * How much do we foresee a need to grow the parser cache pool?
 * The current discussion of splitting the parser cache for mobile to support lazy images and references will have an impact on PC storage needs. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * What sort of notifications architecture do we want and for what purposes?
 * What sort of trending and hybrid algorithm/human curator endpoints and rule engine do we want for things like Trending?
 * On iOS we have been discussing how we can use the curated data on Main pages in the app. These are early discussions, but anything like "in the news", "picture of the day", "article of the day" would be prime candidates for end points CFloyd (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
 * What sorts of generalized independent object storage for new experiences might be desired?
 * What sort of additional analytics hosting needs would we ideally have fulfilled?
 * What do we need to support push services?
 * On iOS we would like to deliver updates to users for events like edits or new feed items. These could be push notifications or just background updates so the app is more responsive when it is launched CFloyd (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Note:
 * Various budget was already requested in the "core narrative" for testing devices, software/SaaS licensing, and known contracting needs
 * No budget was requested for an additional Mac Mini in the "core narrative" (no input was received on this page).