SITUATION
A major Fortune 1000 company in the transportation industry suffered a disruption of its eCommerce website on Cyber Monday in 2011, arguably its busiest shopping day of the year. The website became unstable for a large portion of the day, severely affecting revenues during a popular sale. For a company known widely for trust and customer service, the website disruption was a critical event.
CHALLENGE
The company needed to determine the source of the website disruption as quickly as possible and provide a path to remediation to ensure the event would never be repeated. With plans for solid growth over the next 2–3 years, the company needed to ensure its technology base is not only stable today but also scalable to adapt to future growth. The company leveraged the expertise of AIM Consulting for both of these requirements.
SOLUTION
An AIM consultant was engaged to isolate the source of the bottleneck. Working with the company’s business and technology teams, the consultant pored through historical data, current data, and business forecasts. The primary bottleneck was determined to be a configuration issue associated with a critical infrastructure component. To resolve this issue, the consultant developed a capacity model that not only isolated the bottleneck source but also provided a systems capacity forecast moving forward. Additional analysis revealed that several other infrastructure systems were not able to withstand the loads experienced during the record-breaking Cyber Monday sale.
The capacity model drove further discussions on scalability investments. With additional guidance from AIM, the company has decided to scale up its infrastructure and systems in order to meet future demand.
RESULTS
The expertise provided by AIM Consulting led the company through a smooth Cyber Monday 2012, making it a non-event. The initial phase of the project is now complete. AIM Consulting then moved to assist the company in the project’s second phase, which involves proactive recommendations to help the company build a solid business case to its investment council for more technology improvements over the next 24–36 months.
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