Crescendo's Web Application Performance Blog

Our tagline "Performance when it matters most" holds true - especially in the EDU market.

To an academic institution, this means your portal and e-learning site is fast and available - any slowdowns or outages can be disastrous, causing huge user frustration. Combine this with recurring events like student enrollment/registration that can dramatically increase load. Even if its only 4 times a year, you can't afford to take chances with your web services. But, predicting traffic surges is nearly impossible.

At Crescendo Networks, we know how to empower EDU sites for performance with unpredictable traffic. We can help you deliver fast, predictable applications under any load.

EDU customers like Rutgers University and Pierce College depend on our AppBeat DC application delivery controller for site performance and availability:

- Improved response times by up to 70%
- Ability to sustain traffic spikes at 10x the average load

Want to learn how much Crescendo's ADC can help your site? Test your site now with Crescendo's Performance Calculator.

If it's not, it's time to start evaluating options. Is your web site ready for 10X traffic? That is the benchmark that most IT professionals plan for around the holiday season. These are happy times that translate into big $$$$. Be sure you have a solution in place that will help you exceed revenue projections!!

So, how do you ensure your site is serving user requests fast and stays up and does not suffer from downtime? Application Delivery Controllers are a key part of a successful network infrastructure. To learn more about planning for unpredictable loads, read this new tech brief today.

Run a free test on your url to learn how Crescendo can help you optimize for the upcoming holiday season. If you need more information, our performance experts are also available to do a quick consultation at your convenience.

Don't wait - the clock is ticking!

2 weeks ago I participated in a cloud event called "Powering the Cloud". As much as it sounds like hype, the cloud is actually marching on. The most important fact that allows it to succeed is it's evolutionary nature to virtualization, not a disruptive revolution!

Virtualization has already gone mainstream where almost every IT organization is either using it or considering.

Data by Gartner suggests that via virtualization, organizations can fundamentally change their server to admin ratios - from 20-30 to 1 in the physical world to 60-100 to 1 in the virtual world. The IT world agrees.

Cloud is supposed to go one step further, achieving even more savings by allowing IT to automate processes further as well as farm out key parts of their infrastructure to 3rd parties that can achieve greater economies of scale and thus achieve even more savings.

For customers, since the step to cloud is evolutionary from their regular virtualization infrastructure, they can experiment with small projects to build confidence and test the water. This is already happening today.

A striking example was provided at the event. It involved a company that wanted a new backup redundancy system to their SAP system and compared building a new one internally to hosting one externally using cloud services. They had clearly defined goals of how much data they can lose in case of failure (less than 1 hour) and how quickly the backup system needs to be up (within 20 minutes).

Backup thus had to constantly replicate data from their systems and their servers had to be replicated at the remote hosted site. They ended up choosing the cloud implementation due to significant costs savings, but also gained additional benefits of their disaster recovery with at a remote site and savings in renewing their hardware every few years.

To me, this is a great example of small steps customers can take to test the water. It also highlighted the future is not about private cloud or public cloud but a mesh comprised of private resources where control is critical, and public resources, where possible, that can improve the internal infrastructure on many aspects and introduce additional costs savings not possible internally.

Virtual trade shows, online meetings, con calls, skype - whatever the format, nothing beats face time to make an impression and close a deal. I often forget how important it is at a trade show for people to "see" your corporate brand, team and technology at its best.

My Interop post-mortem report was that it was well worth the investment. The show was buzzing with activity - our booth held non-stop meetings for the first two days of the show (I do, however, question whether there should be a 3rd day of a trade show?). Our panel discussions and booth meetings with potential customers, press and analysts were so colorful in person.

I recently did a lunch & learn event in Boston last week and so enjoyed meeting the people we have been interacting with via phone and email. Again, until you sit down next to someone, it's often hard to gain his or her trust.

Electronic marketing certainly helps the budget, but perhaps we are getting too impersonal for successful business practice?