Application Analysis
Global Business Information Services Provider

Business Challenge

The remote offices of our client, a large business information provider, had challenges using a new application due to its slow performance over the WAN. Response times were consistently two to three times longer than acceptable. Each internal IT department had eliminated themselves as a possible source of the bottleneck, both through internal analysis and through an audit performed by subcontractors. The issue became politically charged, as the true source of the performance issue was not known.

The ultimate goal of the client was to expand subscriber base and content offerings in order to increase both the revenue and profit of a large real estate title firm. To achieve this, they needed to pinpoint the source(s) of the performance issue and provide solutions to resolve them quickly.

Solution

The CIO retained Acumen Solutions to provide an independent analysis of the performance issue. Acumen Solutions was able to work with each IT department to gather the relevant data. The exact sources of the performance bottleneck were identified. In addition, multiple minor performance issues, which could lead to larger problems under load, were also identified. Multiple solutions were recommended and response times for satellite offices were reduced to acceptable levels.

Acumen Solutions took the following steps in executing this project:

Return on Investment

Through detailed transaction analysis, the sources of the performance bottleneck were determined to be a combination of WAN latencies and large data volume downloaded by client browsers. The web and database servers reside locally in the West Coast office so each user must traverse the frame-relay WAN to access the application. Latencies in the WAN are within the guidelines of a strict SLA with the service providers. However, "normal" coast-to-coast latencies are typically over 100ms, which adversely affects most of the key functions of the application as those functions require downloading over 100KB of data.

The Response Time Breakdown diagrams were extremely effective in showcasing the root cause of poor East Coast response times as compared to the West Coast. By breaking down the response time components of each function, everyone agreed and accepted the primary cause of the bottleneck to be a combination of load and WAN latencies.

In addition to the problem of WAN latency/large data volume, response times were lengthened by unstable code, which periodically required the client browser to request data which it did not need. The extra requests were not consistent. The data indicated the volume of data could range by more than 50%. However, the effects in response times were only felt by the satellite offices that utilized the WAN.

Technology Expertise

The expertise utilized by the Acumen Solutions team included: