Challenges

Advertising is Google’s lifeblood, but the capacity to bill for that advertising is the second most critical function. To meet expected exponential growth, the client undertook the upgrade their ERP hardware and software. It had to run consistently, reliably, and very fast. Our challenge was to create data, processes and programs to simulate the expected growth and ensure the systems could keep up with the business.

Solutions

To create the ultimate performance test, we researched and defined the most frequently used, most critical and most resource-intensive test cases. We then mapped the volume potential for each of these processes and created the automated test scripts for both the current and new environments. In this way, we were able to succinctly demonstrate the performance differential between the current system and the potential new system. This allowed us to review results and tune the new environment so that it would work most efficiently.

Results

By the end of this project, we had been able to increase performance by 90% — nearly an order of magnitude — from the original system to the new one. This allowed for years of breakneck growth.