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Netaid.org and Mercury Interactive Partner for Testing
Mercury Interactive conducted Web site stress tests on Netaid.org's Mother & Baby Survival Project, prior to last week's launch. The company used ActiveTest, Mercury Interactive's Web-based load testing e-service, to identify issues with business processes such as credit card authentication and processing, as well as its ability to sustain a high user load. The primary issue identified immediately was a dramatic slowdown in performance when processing credit card information as the amount of simultaneous users increased. In addition, hardware problems were identified, pinpointed, and quickly remedied.
The Mother & Baby Survival Project, featured on the Netaid.org Web site, allows donors to learn more about birthing conditions in Rwanda and purchase a birthing kit for $8 that contains basic sanitary items to be used by expectant mothers, their newborns and their birth attendants. Through larger donations, emergency supplies can be sent to help care for the longer-term needs of literally thousands of women and children. All of the money donated goes directly toward the purchase of survival kits.
Powered by Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner, ActiveTest remotely stress tests Web sites with actual traffic before they go live to ensure optimum performance. ActiveTest emulates the behavior of thousands of users against the system, and identifies bottlenecks and capacity constraints in the site's Web infrastructure. ActiveTest is tailored to the rapidly evolving e-business marketplace, and offers a 24-hour emergency turnaround option. The actual load servers are hosted at first-tier Internet service providers, using bandwidth of up to four gigabytes (GB) per second.
"When we first approached Mercury Interactive with this project, we knew that testing was critical to the success of our site." says Chris Sinton of Netaid.org. "ActiveTest has been integral to our success and helps to ensure that The Mother and Baby Survival Project will let anyone reach out to the mothers and children in Rwanda in a tangible way."
"Just like any other type of e-business, non-profits like Netaid.org must deliver a smooth end-user experience. If Web site visitors have a poor user experience and leave the site, the project can lose the support it really needs," says Ken Klein, COO for Mercury Interactive. "By employing the ActiveTest e-service, even companies with limited resources can push their site to its limits, find potential capacity and performance problems, and receive recommendations on how to remedy them."
Netaid is a non-profit, long-term effort to use the networking capabilities of the Internet to promote development and alleviate extreme poverty across the world. The Netaid.org Foundation was formed by a partnership between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Cisco Systems and the entertainment community. Netaid.org's mission is to use the power of the Internet to promote human development and change the way we help each other.
For more information on Mercury Interactive, visit www.mercuryinteractive.com.
For more information on the Mother & Baby Survival Project, visit netaid.org.