Top 4 Case studies – Missed to do Load Testing and failed miserably thereafter!

For automation of core business processes, most of the businesses go for applications. But prior to making the application available for customers, partners, stakeholders or employees, it should be understood whether the application can acceptably perform under peak load conditions. Herein lays the significance of load testing. It helps you to avoid unnecessary investments through adequate application capacity planning and tuning. Companies may experience serious setbacks without proper load testing, as these four case studies will show.

Case One

Customer service is a significant thing and almost all companies are very serious about it. Here we have a case where an organization on a regular basis indulges in evaluation of the satisfaction levels of the clients by means of different feedback mechanisms including surveys. This is followed by required enhancements to maintain high satisfaction levels. The performance and the reliability of the website play a vital role in empowering the organization to render supreme level of customer service. The web infrastructure is extended across a number of servers linked to the internet through manifold backbone providers. This particular company tried testing the performance of the distributed network by allowing people to log on randomly and provide performance report, through running test scripts. But this load testing was a failure because it did not provide a global perspective with respect to the performance. Measurement of certain specific areas only was being done.

Case Two

A particular appliance was installed by a customer on the network for load balancing a service provider’s Application Firewall. It was reported by the customer that the website stress test did not work out on enabling the Application Firewall. It was also stated by the client that the set up was working so far as the test environment is concerned. However, when the same thing was tried with the Website testing tool, it led to failure. Moreover, the firewall did not have any block logs.

Case Three

This case is about a company owning an HTML5 game development portal which ignored load testing and the web portal had to be again pulled back into beta testing. As the portal was taken out of the beta and put into the live world, several problems cropped up with the backend. As a result, the site was unable to scale at a rapid pace to keep in line with the load. It was an uncomfortable experience for the users who were keen on browsing the website and accessing the games. The organization owning the portal was not prepared enough for the real world usage, and owing to this the launch of the application was a failure.

Case Four

Here we have a company whose content delivery network enables media companies to go for large file delivery of the present age rich media Internet to the clients. Since the organization renders B2B content delivery services, keeping in line with the expectations of the media clients is a must. This can only be done through facilitating content delivery with high performance. For this, monitoring of static content of web pages as well as streaming media with respect to a global end user perspective was required. The company found it difficult to perform appropriate load testing because it did not have servers across the globe set up for testing streaming quality or http service. As a result, the organization failed to evaluate the stream quality as well as performance of its Windows Media Video and Flash Media servers.

Load and stress testing, when appropriately performed through an application’s development cycle goes a long way in reducing the count of failures affecting the application. This is a very essential aspect, especially when the application is customer facing and in involved in interaction with an external audience.

We provide software performance testing services. If you would like to hire performance testers from our team, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Top 4 Case Studies – Why missing out on Load Testing can be disastrous!

Each enterprise wants to beat its competitors by launching a powerful website. So it always explores options to optimize the look, feel, performance and scalability of the website. In addition to keeping the visitors engaged, the web application also needs to handle the constant fluctuations in the size of the website traffic. No enterprise can predict the exact number of users who will simultaneously access its website. Therefore, it must load test the website thoroughly to ensure that it is stable, scalable and high-performance. There are many instances when the website development projects failed only due to failure in load testing. These companies could have optimized the performance and scalability of the websites simply by conducting load testing.

Case Study I

Each person wants to participate in the famed New York City Marathon. The people who cannot participate in the hugely popular event keenly follow the runners’ progress during the race. So many websites try to attract users by allowing them to observe the runners’ progress live. A popular online sports portal tried to broadcast the race without implementing a proper load testing plan. The webmasters even ignored to check if the website and web server are effective in handling an enormous size of traffic at average page duration of one second. The absence of a comprehensive load testing strategy made them face one of the worst-case scenarios for the performance of their websites as well as the server load. The webmasters rectified their mistakes, and load tested the application immediately to optimize its performance during the next New York City Marathon.

Case Study II

The owner of a popular online gift card store underestimated the significance of load testing. The entrepreneur even did not realize whether the website and web server are optimized to handle heavy load during busy holiday season. The owner realized the problem only when the website failed to deliver maximum capacity during the peak holiday season. However, the webmaster realized the problem immediately, and hired renowned software testing service provider to identify the problem. After evaluating the system and environment thoroughly, the professionals found problem in a key section of the code that affects the scalability of the web store. The web store owner could have avoided the problem easily thorough load testing during the development and deployment of the website.

Case Study III

Some companies even do not realize the significance of load testing while migrating to a new and advanced system. The new system definitely offers loads on innovative features, functionalities and advantages to an enterprise. A large communication service company failed to avail the benefits of an advanced system as it failed to implement a detailed load testing plan. It invested a huge amount of funds in buying and installing the mission-critical systems. But the systems failed to support the company’s workflow along with a large number of users. The load testers hired by the enterprise identified problem with the hardware. The new system needs higher specification hardware to support a large number of users.

Case Study IV

A popular online action sports network updates its websites at regular intervals without conducting any load testing. New sections were being added to the website to complement promotion and sponsoring of various sports events. At the same time, the website also allows participants to register by submitting information. The participants also have option to create their sports profiles, monitor the activities of competitors, and communicate with promoters and sponsors. After some time, the sports network realized that the website is working at a much slower pace. It hired experienced load testers to determine the nature of the exact problem. The testers prepare a comprehensive load testing plan, and suggested the changes required to optimize the performance and scalability of the website.

Conclusion

In each of the above mentioned cases, websites owners concentrate more on the features and functionality of the website. The enterprises failed to determine if the website is effective in handling a large number of visitors at a time. Some websites like the marathon portal and gift card store need to handle heavy traffic only at certain times. But no webmaster can predict when the website will attract an increasing number of visitors. So most enterprises, nowadays, are integrating load testing as part of the website development strategy. The test-driven development strategy will further optimize the performance and scalability of a website in the long run. Also, the enterprise can avoid maintenances required to meet huge website traffic.

You can hire software testing companies from India after due validation of their skillsets, expertise and experience in handling huge load testing projects to avoid risks associated with letting an amateur do load testing for you.

We provide load testing services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified software testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Load Testing: The Ultimate Way to Control the Queue

As the current trend goes, developers are into the habit of releasing brand new mobile apps with an aim to generate a queue for the users before a comprehensive support system can be built up for their app to fix evident issues. From the usability point of view, implementing a queue is indeed a great idea. It generates a lot of excitement within your users and also succeeds in adding that exclusivity factor to an application while the developer can deal with the scalability concerns in parallel.

However, let’s have a look at the other side of the coin. Having a queue may indeed be exciting for a few days but making users wait for the applications while the issues are being sorted out may prove to be a very risky bet for the developer or application owner, particularly when the switching cost for a user is very low. This gives a lot of scope to the impatient user to cross out your application and switch over to the subsequent one, without even getting the chance to appreciate the quality of your application.

There is off course a brilliant way to reduce this risk factor, and that’s where Load Testing comes in. It is the process of subjecting your system to high load and participation and evaluating the response. So, before making your application/app public, try to figure out the application’s performance against peak load conditions, maximum anticipated load. This will help you understand whether all the systems will synchronize in the proper manner and manage the burden of the entire user base.

Significance of Load Testing Services

The fundamental goal of Load Testing is to make sure than an application will register a good performance, in the production stage itself. With the help of load testing, you will be able to find out whether you application will cease to function or function inappropriately under heavy load and if the application is sturdy enough to fulfill the pre-determined performance levels. Moreover, load testing also gives a fair idea as to the number of users the website or application can simultaneously handle.

Some of the common performance issues that applications may face are the following:

• Issues related to software configuration (for database, web server, load balancers and so on)
• Problems arising from improper network configuration
• Imperfect software code
• Inadequate hardware assets

The sole means to identify these performance setbacks at the production stage is load testing, i.e., simulating a plethora of concurrent users. It also has a positive impact on the company’s Return on Investment by reducing the financial cost arising out of service interruptions and poor performance.

Generally speaking, this type of testing is most applicable to multiple-user systems, usually those operating on a client-server model, like web servers. But load testing can also be done for other software systems. For instance, you can always verify whether a financial package is suitable enough to process years of data and create a report accordingly or if a word processor can read an exceptionally bulky document.

Things to consider while Load Testing

• The following things need to be considered in order to ensure that your load testing is successful:
• The load goals should be clearly defined and measurable in terms of relevant parameters like requests per second, concurrent users, etc.
• Specify the goals based on real-time scenarios. For example, when you are setting the load goals in terms of number of concurrent users, specify according to the expected number within a particular time span.
• In case your application is brand new and there are no previous or specified server logs, take help from those involved in the company’s promotional activities and decide the peak.
• Set the response time based on the user acceptance quotient.

Load Testing is the ultimate means to identify the shortcomings in your website or application before launching, to ensure that even the user who is the earliest in the queue, is not facing any performance setbacks. In the long run, this will help you rise above the low ratings and unfavorable reviews, and make your application seamlessly sail through.

We provide software performance testing services. Our certified load testers can help increase the robustness of your application. To know more how, please visit Mindfire Solutions.