> SUN, IBM, Oracle or any other respected consultant
Are you implying that Sun, IBM, and Oracle are respected for the prowess of their consulting organizations? I'm sure they have some Fine People working there, however the view that "writing a seven-figure cheque to these companies guarantees a positive outcome" is not universally held.
is there any publicly available documentation for twitter's architecture?
did they use consultant help, did they contact SUN, IBM, Oracle or any other respected consultant when they started facing those problems?
i recommend you watch this video: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/qcon-voca-architecture-sp...
really ... we need to have a look at twitter architecture before we discuss this further