Thousands or even millions of customers, partners, and employees engage with your company every day. These interactions often involve no human contact at all. In fact, the primary relationship many people have with your organization is through your applications. So, it is imperative that these systems perform as expected and are accessible when needed.
However these applications are under massive stresses. Growing volumes of customers access your systems at peak times of the day. For instance, banking applications experience large demand at the start of the day as clients check their balances. Or, peak loads may appear seasonally, as is typical for retailers and travel agents in the holiday season. Or, there may be discrete events like a major promotion or a critical weather event that causes a major spike in usage.
It is not just the volume of users that leads to higher demand on your applications; there is also increased application complexity. Today’s Web 2.0 applications, which are designed to be more responsive to users, can be highly resource intensive. This compounds the effects of increased demand.