I'm at a developer conference here are some interesting reads that I have to look into:

http://qconsf.com/dl/qcon-sanfran-2011/slides/SastryMalladi_DealingWithPerformanceChallengesOptimizedSerializationTechniques.pdf


http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/


http://www.zeromq.org/

http://labs.spotify.com/2013/02/25/in-praise-of-boring-technology/