Ameritrade, one of America`s leading online brokerage firms, has experienced an incredible boost in its Web site availability and performance - including a 600 percent increase in online trading transaction speed - due in part to the use of Mercury Interactive`s LoadRunner load testing solution.
Mercury Interactive, a leader in Web performance management solutions, successfully deployed its Web load testing solution on Ameritrade`s online brokerage Web site recently.
According to Graeme Allcock, sales manager of Mercury Interactive in South Africa, by using LoadRunner, Ameritrade is able to emulate heavy user loads in their performance test environment to identify and isolate performance bottlenecks. Ameritrade has used this capability to fine-tune their systems` performance and has moved ahead of its competitors in industry performance measures.
Recently, Ameritrade received the highest rating for speed and customer experience with five stars in a Money magazine survey of "The Best Online Brokers of 2000," and a number one ranking in performance by Technology Investor.
"We are extremely pleased with the tremendous gains achieved recently in the area of speed and reliability with the help of LoadRunner," says James Ditmore, chief information officer of Ameritrade.
"As a leader in the consumer-driven online brokerage industry, Web site performance and reliability are crucial. Our customers are enjoying significant increases in site speed and reliability.
"LoadRunner promotes a new level of customer satisfaction, which further enhances our bottom line."
Allcock says that LoadRunner accomplished these improvements by emulating real-life traffic loads up to five times greater than levels currently seen in production - identifying bottlenecks so they can be immediately addressed - to ensure Ameritrade is able to handle peak loads during active trading days.
It was also a critical component in the success of a recent Ameritrade project involving delivery of real-time information updates from Ameritrade`s back-end and trading systems.
Mercury Interactive`s technical team assisted in the project by improving the efficiency of Ameritrade`s load test implementation. During the test, LoadRunner`s virtual users performed more than 280 trading transactions per second on the Ameritrade site. By testing the complex system under load, Ameritrade was able to optimise the system`s performance.
"Few e-businesses rely on Web site and transaction performance as much as an online brokerage," says Allcock. "Ameritrade`s keen customer focus drives them to test early and often using our Web performance management solutions. Testing for performance and reliability gives Ameritrade confidence that systems will run smoothly when new features are added to the site, as well as helping to ensure that the company`s Web site stands up to the traffic anytime the market gets active."
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Mercury Interactive
Mercury Interactive is the leading provider of Web performance management solutions that help e-businesses deliver a positive user experience. Mercury Interactive solutions turn Web application performance, scalability and user experience into competitive advantage. The company`s performance management products and hosted services are open and integrated to best test and monitor business-critical Web applications.
More than 10 000 business to business and business to consumer e-businesses, Internet Service Providers, Applications Service Providers, systems integrators, and consultants use Mercury Interactive solutions. Mercury Interactive is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and has 40 offices worldwide, including South Africa. The company can be reached at www.mercuryinteractive.com