Getting stuck into Web performance

As Big Brother went live on M-Net subscribers` TV screens across the country just under two months ago, its online presence on M-Web died. The reason? The site was swamped by thousands of South Africans keen to get to know all the housemates a bit better over the Internet.

The IT team at M-Web moved swiftly to cope with the unanticipated extra load, implementing several service upgrades in the next few days to ensure locals could get back onto the site. It`s gone from strength to strength since then, as those addicted to the TV show visit it again and again to log their comments and votes.

On a more serious note, online news sites across the world collapsed under the weight of demands for access following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in the US. Many struggled to access main services in the aftermath of the disaster as more and more people came online to follow the drama as it unfolded.

However, not every Web site out there has the kind of dramatic, in your face news hooks that these sites did, ie a groundbreaking local reality television show and an awful attack on the world`s economic hub. In fact, for most Web sites losing a customer once through non-performance means losing them forever. And in today`s increasingly Internet-driven economy, that`s not big news - it`s bad news.

Ensuring users on your Web site have a smooth Internet experience is crucial to your long-term growth plans, says Graeme Allcock, sales director at Mercury Interactive, an enterprise testing and performance management company.

"Local companies need to realise that very few South African surfers have settled on `favourite` sites yet. Once they do, research has shown that getting them to move onto a different site is extremely difficult. So, if you want to become one of the favourites, performance is key."

Local companies need to realise that very few South African surfers have settled on `favourite` sites yet.

Graeme Allcock, sales director, Mercury Interactive

That Web performance is vital is borne out by a recent report published by IT research group Newport, entitled "Annual Load Test Market Summary and Analysis". According to this report, today`s Global 2000 business attributes, on average, 15% of bottom line revenue to their Web-enabled business channel and this is expected to climb to 22% by the end of this year.

The bottom line, adds the report, is that "Web applications and the infrastructures that support them must be capable of executing processes with speed and precision while sustaining high volumes of fluctuating and unpredictable audiences".

In other words, attracting repeat visitors to a site and ensuring they don`t abandon their virtual shopping baskets means providing easy access and getting rid of dead links, inconsistencies among site versions, difficult navigation and preventing transaction failures.

Achieving all of this, says Allcock, requires a serious commitment to load testing.

Load testing is aimed at making a site "sticky" - keeping visitors coming back for more again and again. It involves using testing tools that simulate realistic volumes of users to measure, define, validate and maintain optimal application and infrastructure importance. Using these tools, businesses can gain an understanding of how their Web-based applications will perform, where there is room for tuning and improvement, how their users will be serviced and how they will plan and manage business growth.

Peter French, regional sales director at Compuware SA, says those companies that check the integrity, functionality, reliability and scalability of their Web sites using proven testing services and solutions are those that will have their customers, suppliers and business partners coming back for more.

French says paying equal attention to all four of these components is vital. "Applications are at the centre of all businesses. It`s all very well being able to say that your Web server stays up 99% of the time. The real question is `What is my application uptime?`"

The Newport report states that as the business value of load testing for Web-enabled environments has been proven and recognised, load testing efforts are now more readily supported by business executives as an integral part of the application development, deployment and management process. The result is that load testing solutions aimed at Web-based environments realised an overall growth of 114%, growing from a 1999 level of $123.5 million to $263.8 million in 2000.

Once people are made aware the tools are available, budgetary constraints are the next hurdle to overcome.

Neil Cosser, business development manager, Atio e-commerce division

However, the adoption of load testing solutions outside the US accounted for only 29.5% of the market revenue last year.

South African corporates, says Allcock, aren`t as serious about load testing as their international counterparts. "Although the local financial services, telecom and petro-chemical sectors use testing tools quite extensively, I would guess that about half of all local companies with Web presences haven`t included load testing in their IT budgets at all."

Neil Cosser, business development manager for the e-commerce division at Atio, says he believes the largest single factor here is the lack of awareness of performance testing products.

"Once people are made aware the tools are available, budgetary constraints are the next hurdle to overcome. Most e-initiatives are given a budget for a start-up phase. This generally only covers infrastructure and applications and nothing else. The initiative is then informed that on becoming profitable funds will become available for performance testing and monitoring, customer profiling, etc. This philosophy unfortunately often clips the wings of the fledgling business and it never flies. On the flip side of this, technical staff on both application and infrastructure often see performance monitoring tools as a stick to beat them with, as these tools will highlight the shortcomings of the Web site."

Load testing is expensive. Both Allcock and French agree that many Web site owners simply don`t have the budget to spend on load testing. "For a week`s testing at an SME, you`re looking at upwards of R40 000, and that does not include buying the tools," says Cosser.

However, prices across the globe are starting to drop. Newport believes there are a number of factors causing this. New entrants into the market are leveraging price in competitive situations to win deals. Also, some vendors are choosing to combine the use of in-house load testing with outsourced, hosted/remote load testing services, meaning that customers no longer need to buy their own tools. In addition, more and more companies are adopting load testing solutions as they begin to move their business-critical applications to the Web, meaning there`s more business out there per vendor, which has also contributed to prices dropping. The challenging economic climate has also had an impact, says the Newport report, as vendors - aware that IT spending is being closely scrutinised - have responded by cutting their prices.

Absa has a drive to increase customer satisfaction; it`s crucial that the free Internet service is of the highest quality, after all, free does not mean inferior.

Henri Slabbert, GM, Absa Direct

Despite these challenges, Mercury Interactive has managed to increase its dominance of the global Web load testing market. In 2000, says the Newport report, it captured 63% of this sector. This is more than seven times the market share of its closest competitor and is up from 49% in 1999. It also dominated the hosted load testing services market, securing more than half the revenue generated by these services. Other top vendors in the Web-based applications load testing area include Empirix and Segue (9% each), Compuware (6%), Rational (5%), RadView (4%) and Cyrano (1%).

Among Mercury Interactive`s local corporate customers is Absa Bank, which recently invested in its ActiveWatch product.

ActiveWatch is an around-the-clock service that proactively identifies and pinpoints problems within even the most complex of Web sites and applications. Based on Mercury Interactive`s Topaz offering, ActiveWatch accurately measures Web site user experience from various points around SA to ensure peak performance for Absa clients on a 25x7x365 basis.

ActiveWatch monitors Absa`s service from three different aspects: Internet banking from an end-user experience; the Absa main site, to ensure that all areas are working correctly and that Reuters information is correctly updated; and dialup service use from seven points around the country - Bloemfontein, East London, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth.

Henri Slabbert, GM of Absa Direct, says: "Absa has a drive to increase customer satisfaction; it`s crucial that the free Internet service is of the highest quality, after all, free does not mean inferior.

"We actively monitor our Internet service and constantly benchmark it against two other providers of similar services to ensure that we lead the way. We are delighted that Mercury Interactive tools offer an extensive reporting capability. We are also pleased to report with absolute certainty, a certainty underwritten by Active Watch, that we are at the top of the graph in all aspects of our Internet applications."

As part of ActiveWatch`s monitoring service, Absa can regularly obtain availability statistics and performance online as well as receive live alerts signalling performance difficulties and pinpointing problems before they are noticed by customers.

Another company in the financial services market that has recently invested in a load testing initiative is the Group Information Management (GIM) business unit. Part of the Liberty Group, it recently bought a 300 virtual user licence for WebLOAD.

WebLOAD is supplied by RadView, a US-based provider of Internet infrastructure solutions for verifying the performance, scalability and integrity of business-critical Web applications. Atio is the African distributor of the product.

The GIM business unit will use WebLOAD to ensure that future enhancements to its production system are robust and stable enough to handle the expected number of concurrent users.

Beatrice Bayes, the head of Blueprint Systems at The Liberty Group, says they initially used WebLOAD to test the robustness of the new Liberty Personal Benefits Blueprint Online system, a Web-based system that has quoting, new business and servicing functionalities. The testing tool was rented for the quality assurance project and, once the value that it provided was realised, the organisation decided to purchase the product.

"WebLOAD accurately simulates real-life Internet user behaviours and reports performance issues and bottlenecks within the application and infrastructure to help companies deploy high performing e-business applications," explains Cosser.

Bayes says Liberty Personal Benefits user base is in excess of 4 000, mostly comprising remote users either on dialup or with direct links into the intranet.

"All our servicing of Liberty Personal Benefits clients will be online in the future, therefore quality and a stable system are vital."

All our servicing of Liberty Personal Benefits clients will be online in the future, therefore quality and a stable system are vital.

Beatrice Bayes, head of Blueprint Systems, Liberty Group

Compuware, which is firmly established in the SA market, recently announced the newest addition to its product portfolio. PointForward is a remote load testing service that includes reliability testing, integrity testing and performance monitoring. One of the many examples of how successful PointForward can be in delivering value to cyber-shoppers is the performance of one of the most highly trafficked brands on the Internet, BMG Direct. This Web offering by BMG Music Service averages six million to seven million hits each year.

During last year`s holiday rush, BMG Direct relied heavily on Compuware`s remote scalability testing to ensure its site didn`t go down and that BMGMusicService.com could handle the rush of visitors arising from advertising efforts during the holiday season.

With PointForward, BMG was able to test its more intensive transactions under various conditions - helping the organisation to better understand its site`s performance and plan appropriately.

No doubt BMG will perform equally well this festive season. But will the same be able to be said about local sites expecting an influx of holiday shoppers?

Web site failures can be costly, both in terms of lost revenue, negative publicity, and even worse, loss of loyal customers. US research group Forrester surveyed several large e-commerce sites in January 1999. The group found that Cisco.com, which generated $20 million revenue a day, would lose $182 640 if it was not operational for one hour.

Although testing is pricey, best you balance the cost of ensuring your Web site performs against it not being available at all.

Peter French, regional sales director, Compuware SA

Research group Jupiter surveyed 2 400 end-users after they encountered Web site failures while conducting e-commerce transactions. While half of the users remained loyal to the site, 10% left and never returned, 13% failed to return after completing their transaction, and 24% went off and tried a competitor`s site before coming back.

As French says: "Although testing is pricey, best you balance the cost of ensuring your Web site performs against it not being available at all."