• My new application is about to go ‘live’. Will it be able to handle the expected number of users?

• Next week an important marketing campaign begins. Will the infrastructure of my application be able to process all the extra expected concurrent users?

• Which number of concurrent users to my application will lead to long waiting (time), overload or non-availability?

• What bottlenecks are present in my infrastructure? Subsequently how do I go about scaling up the capacity of my application?

Why application load & stress testing?

Users/Customers will complain and even leave if a application has performance problems. At worst, this will lead to dissatisfied users/customers or even missed opportunities. However, damage has already been done. In order to eliminate this risk, a periodic automated application load and stress test is the solution.

Your Solution - Application Performance Testing (APT)

APT is a unique service for performing application load & stress tests. With APT, MCG Systems tests your application infrastructure based on simulations of different numbers of application users. Not only will you learn when delays, overload or unavailability occur, you will also find out which underlying (technical) factors cause these problems. This enables you to optimize the performance of your current application environment and to speed up applications.

When to perform load & stress testing?

• With each new application deployment
• When a new release of a application contains substantial changes to the functionality or to the architecture
• When there have been changes to the application infrastructure (server consolidation)
• When deploying new centralized applications to remote locations
• Before starting or running a marketing campaign
• When you have known performance-related problems
• To perform an independent check for agreed-upon requirements with third-party vendors developing or hosting applications for you

Delivers

• Insight into the maximum number of users your application can handle
• Insight into the delays per user and per transaction
• Insight into performance and availability
• Insight into if application is WAN production-ready (Will it meet service level objectives to the users across all remote locations?)
• Insight into application bandwidth requirements per user
• Diagnostics of where any bottlenecks occur in your application infrastructure
• Guiding points to efficiently scale the application environment
• Data to manage third parties, such as hosting providers or application developers

Approach

The starting point of application load & stress testing is to simulate user behavior through user profiles. This may include altering personal information, retrieving a product item or placing a order. During the performance of the application load & stress test, a combination of different user profiles is commonly used to simulate the total number of concurrent application users. By gradually increasing the number of users during the stress test, the load on your application is incremented. An analysis of the performance and availability measurements carried out during the test provides detailed insight into the maximum capacity and possible bottlenecks within the entire application environment.

Why choose MCG Systems?

• Unique testing method, modular approach, various testing configurations possible
• Total solution. MCG Systems performs all tasks for you
• Expertice in applications based on Web, J2EE, .NET, Windows, Oracle, SAP, Terminal (ex. 3270) and Citrix
• Easy-to read reports and smart recommendations on how to fix performance-related problems
• Results differentiate between (application) server and (network) application response times
• Quick results. Your MCG Systems consultant will be able to execute a application load & stress test for you on short notice
• Independent test results you can use for guiding various parties
• Conclusions are verifiable by leaving a database of test results