N.J. computerizing driver testing

From The Philadelphia Inquirer

TRENTON - The New Jersey driver testing system is undergoing an overhaul. The Motor Vehicle Commission announced yesterday that Robbinsville-based New Jersey Business Systems has been awarded a contract valued at about $4 million to update the system.
The project is to begin this month and could be complete by late spring.

The written test will use networked personal computers, allowing for more efficient test management and scheduling. Security measures to prevent cheating will include random tests unique to each applicant.

Changes to the road test include GPS tracking to prevent fraud and the use of lightweight tablet computers by examiners for automated scoring

What customers say about WAN optimization

From Network World

Network optimization means different things to different people. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy keeping tabs on the field, since the technologies, customer settings and implementation tactics seem endlessly varied.

This week I’m going to kick off a series of customer stories that reflect that variability. Over the last several weeks I’ve had the chance to talk to a handful of enterprise IT executives about their recent and ongoing WAN optimization projects. Beginning with the next newsletter, I’m going to share those stories.

For instance, there’s Merial, the animal healthcare giant behind consumer pet supply brands such as Heartgard and Frontline. Based in Atlanta, Merial operates in more than 150 countries. When the company decided to centralize its key business applications, it chose WAN optimization gear from Silver Peak Systems to boost application delivery worldwide and to speed data replication between data centers for business continuity and disaster recovery purposes.

Another company that shared its story is CGGVeritas, a geophysical company that works with major petroleum companies to help them find oil and gas reserves. CGGVeritas collects, crunches and distributes massive quantities of data, and it’s using Aspera’s file transport software to enable fast, predictable and reliable transfers of seismic data over the WAN.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group shared details about how it prepped for the peak summer car rental season, in part by load testing its two redesigned Web sites.

Your Web App, Their Experience: Load Testing 2.0

From TechNewsWorld

Traditional load-testing methodologies can measure the strength of an enterprise's internal infrastructure. However, if external, third-party components aren't delivering snappy Web application performance, customers likely won't care whose fault it is -- they'll just go away. Load testing 2.0 is a way to assess your Web app's performance from the customer's point of view.

Imagine that it's "show time" for your company's annual peak period of e-commerce traffic. If you've ever been an e-commerce manager for a toy company on Black Friday, a floral company the day before Mother's Day, or a sporting events ticketing company a month before the Super Bowl, then you can surely relate.

Your online customer service representatives are trained and primed to help your customers. Your warehouse shelves are stocked, and your logistics providers are all lined up at the door. Your marketing promotions and campaigns are in full throttle, and your feature-rich Web applications including search, online catalogs, shopping carts, order status information, ratings and reviews, streaming video and more are all ready to roll.

Then -- boom! -- something in your most critical Web application goes awry the very day or days that exceptional performance is needed most, bringing your e-commerce operation to a screeching halt. Thousands of shopping carts and product searches go abandoned, and you have more disgruntled customers than you can imagine.

"Impossible," you might say, "we've conducted internal testing of our Web applications inside and out! All our tests have passed, and we are confident our internal infrastructure can handle our best-case traffic and then some." I'm here to tell you -- testing internal components is not enough to "get it right." With potentially huge revenue hits and brand image on the line, is anything less than exceptional performance really something you can live with?


You're Only as Strong as Your Web App's Weakest Link
Let's start with a look at today's Web applications, which have evolved from single-function tools to extended, interdependent, multi-tier delivery chains comprising numerous third-party applications and services. The performance of your Web application in its entirety hinges on the performance of each and every third-party application or service comprising it. Consider an online sales application which includes search, shopping cart and check-out functionalities. Together, these functionalities comprise a highly interdependent Web application delivery chain, and poor performance at any step can bring down performance of the entire application.

Today's modern Web sites incorporate an average of six third-party applications and services delivering content and functionalities from beyond the firewall, all converging and assembling in your customers' browsers. Third-party applications and services are more prevalent than one might think and include such commonly used features as CDNs, Omniture and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Analytics. While these third-party applications and services are designed to enable a richer online experience, they also present a liability since it's estimated they comprise 50 percent or more of the time a user spends waiting for a Web site or application to load.

In a recent study, Aberdeen Group found that a 1-second increase in response time can reduce online sales conversions by 7 percent. In the event of poor application performance, customers simply don't care which of your third-party application providers is to blame. Instead, they will hold you responsible, and failure to guarantee performance anywhere in your Web application delivery chain can result in significant damage to your brand and revenue.

Large Hadron Collider grid stress-tested

From CNet News

The grid that will process data from the Large Hadron Collider has undergone stress testing, as CERN and other groups try to gauge its limits.

The tests, called Scale Testing for the Experiment Program '09, threw huge amounts of data around the distributed computing project, which uses dedicated optical-fiber networks to distribute data from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) to 11 main computer centers in Europe, Asia, and North America.

From these centers, data is dispatched to over 140 centers in 33 countries around the globe, where the LHC data is managed and processed. The recent grid tests, which lasted for two weeks, were completed before the beginning of July.

LHC computing-grid project leader Ian Bird said Friday that CERN had tried to break the grid but had not succeeded.

"People were trying to break the system by seeing how much data we could push through it, but we didn't (break it)," Bird told ZDNet UK. "The test was successful."

Data from all the experiments running at CERN--including analyses from the Atlas particle accelerator, which is linked to the LHC--were processed through the grid, according to Bird. While the amount of data expected from the LHC will be in the area of 1.3GB per second, the grid systems were bombarded with 4GB per second. "The data volume got to a much larger scale than is needed," Bird said.

GSIS did not address database crash, says IBM

From Inquirer.net

MANILA, Philippines – IBM continues to assert that it is not at fault for the major database crashes experienced by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

In a statement, the company warned that the GSIS has “made it impossible” for both parties to resolve the issue more constructively.

IBM was responding to several announcements by the GSIS through paid print and TV advertisements , weeks after the government agency filed cases against IBM.

In June 3, GSIS charged IBM Philippines and its parent US company, and systems integrator Questronix for failure to fix the crashes of its Integrated Loans, Membership, Acquired Assets and Accounts Management System (ILMAAAMS).

GSIS alleged that IBM’s DB2 database software was the cause of the crashes, which started in April. IBM countersued with a libel case against GSIS.

IBM also warned that ILMAAAMS would continue to experience stability problems until it implements several suggestions made by Questronix in May.

Among these suggestions include backup and recovery procedures, system performance testing based on industry standards and employing certified personnel to regularly manage their systems.

CDC's "Lord of the Rings" to Test in July

From JLM Pacific Epoch

CDC Corporation's (NASDAQ:CHINA) online games subsidiary CDC Games plans to start technology load testing of its licensed MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online in mid-July, reports Sina. The company announced June 30 that it expects to launch the game in the second half of 2009, whereas previous reports said it had slated a third quarter release.

Baselining VoIP service quality

From CED

Simple changes to the installation procedure can provide significant returns.

The network and infrastructure are architected, the product is developed, load testing of the infrastructure is complete, the marketing campaign is underway and customers are signing up at a blistering pace. You want your triple-play installation to go smoothly and don’t want to send a technician to the house for installation issues that can be detected automatically. The ideal scenario is a self-installation by the customer. No one has to be home, there is no truck roll and costs are kept to a minimum.

Unfortunately, the technical competence of customers and the number of unsuccessful installations has kept the percentage of self-installations relatively small. Most carriers still send technicians for at least one triple-play service installation, and some are sending a technician for every new service turn-up. Truck roll costs vary from carrier to carrier but range up to $500. If a second truck must be rolled just to correct the initial installation, 10 months’ revenue from a $50 service is wasted.