ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS (08/21/2000) - NaviSite Inc., a hosting firm and application service provider, is preparing to roll out a service that allows enterprises to see how their Web sites respond to particular volumes of traffic.
The testing will be part of the managed services menu NaviSite offers to companies that have their Web site hosted at the company's data centers.
Administrators can get response time information about their sites from free load-testing tools available on the Internet, but NaviSite's performance testing will produce more-detailed results, says Todd Michaud, practice manager for the performance testing service.
"With our integration, we can look at the server and see how the database is performing, whether there are some queuing issues, whether there are some long table issues, how the CPU and operating system are performing," he explains.
"We can check if there are disk bottleneck or swapping problems, how the application server is performing and whether we hit a queue limit of Navigator or Explorer we didn't expect."
NaviSite will be able to generate detailed information by combining Segue Software's SilkPerformer testing tool with BMC Patrol management software.
NaviSite will market the service to companies launching new Web sites as well as those launching new marketing campaigns on existing sites.
Enterprises signing up for the testing service will first have to tell NaviSite what actions typical surfers perform while on their site and how those users access the site. Based on that information, NaviSite will build a testing matrix and begin recording transactions.
The performance test will begin with a small number of transactions and scale up until it reaches a breaking point. NaviSite will then do an analysis of why the site failed, make adjustments to allow the site to scale higher and continue testing and adjusting until the site performs as well as a company wants it to perform.
In the future, NaviSite will use the service to give its clients better service- level agreements on their Web sites' performance, says Jeff Loeb, a NaviSite vice president.
Pricing for the testing service begins at US$20,000 for tests of up to 500 concurrent users.
NaviSite: www.navisite.com