We decided to move the provisioning process to an API-driven process, and had to decide among a few implementation languages:

• Go, the server-side language from Google
• NodeJS, an asynchronous framework in Javascript

We built prototypes in both languages, and decided on NodeJS:

• NodeJS is asynchronous-by-default, which suited the problem domain. Provisioning is more like “start the job, let me know when you’re done” than a traditional C-style program that’s CPU-bound and needs low-level efficiency.
• NodeJS acts as an HTTP-based service, so exposing the API was trivial

Getting into the headspace and internalizing the assumptions of a tool helps pick the right one. NodeJS assumes services will be non-blocking/event-driven and HTTP-accessible, which snapped into our scenario perfectly. The new NodeJS architecture resulted in a staggering 95% reduction in processing time: requests went from 7.5 seconds to under a second. Node.js