Spotlight on Performance Engineering
New user behaviors that businesses are introducing to their web sites are driving more volume than ever before. Product promotions and shifting business models can trigger radical spikes in user traffic and expose issues not encountered at more traditional levels. This new, unexpected workload can result in a flash or “burst” and spike traffic to dramatically high levels in a short period of time. Why does this happen? For instance, marketing departments often neglect to inform IT departments of aggressive campaigns. Businesses often don’t take the key steps to ensure that IT can support these campaigns.
In August of 2010, Groupon offered $50 of merchandise from The Gap, Inc. for $25 and consumers bought more than 441,000 vouchers. The Gap is one of the top 25 most visited Internet retail web sites. In December 2010, Amazon partnered with LivingSocial to make $20 vouchers available for $10. Shoppers scooped up more than 1.3 million vouchers. Amazon is the number one Internet retailer. As a membership reward, Gilt and Rue La La schedule a limited time, private sale of high-end merchandise. Access patterns from mobile devices such as the iPhone plus content aggregators such as Mint.com can drive system workloads to unexpected levels in a short period of time. These types of events can provide a cataclysmic rush to IT resources, and IT is often forced to react to a performance-engineering emergency instead of being prepared ahead of time.
Web sites that previously experienced smooth and steady traffic increases that could be accurately predicted over time are now subject to erratic day-to-day volumes and dramatic surges. IT groups are quickly trying to assess the impact to the infrastructure that these workload profiles generate. The load-testing infrastructure required to Drive On-Demand Performance Testing with Cloud Computing and Proactively Meet Your Market Needs simulate these extreme burst loads can be prohibitively expensive to create and maintain. The traditional load testing approach of simulating virtual users can test many aspects of the system, but since the tests originate inside the company’s network instead of on the Internet, many complicated factors are unable to be validated. This leaves a significant gap in the IT team’s ability to accurately validate the web site’s ability to absorb burst loads.
A website is a complex system with many components. These components may not have been designed to handle sudden and extreme bursts of volume. As components in the system become stressed and begin to fail under this burst load the web site often becomes unstable and users of the site are subjected to longer and longer response times. As this occurs, customer experience with the site will descend from satisfied to tolerable to frustrated and finally to abandonment. This begs the question; how does your web site’s response time change under sudden and increasing volume? Does it reach a tipping point and fail completely? Does it accept all requests and then do all users experience a significant slowdown? Do your best customers see the same slowdown as those just browsing or are they all treated equally?
These questions can only truly be answered by validating your web site during burst levels. Collaborative can help you evaluate and implement the right Cloud testing solution for your Enterprise and help deliver an outstanding customer experience for your website.
