I was talking to our head of operations, Eric Stokesberry, just the other day. He said that we like to take pride in the fact that our global network (comprised of Windows XP machines, actual mobile handsets, Linux boxes and the like in 2400 locations) execute almost 250 million Internet measurements every single day. That's pretty impressive, considering that Salesforce.com, the premier SaaS company in the world, does about 50,000 transactions per day.
It struck me that our SaaS operations system has all the complexity of a powerful, Sabre-like airline reservations system and an airport's logistics system. Our customers make reservations, through an automated scheduling process, to execute Web (or mobile) application/site test scripts, for, say, every 2 minutes. For Web performance measurements, the time it takes to execute the test script itself depends upon both connection speed and the construction of the application itself.
The speed of the connection that our measurement computers are connected to could be last mile DSL speeds, or it could be Tier1 broadband speeds - the customer has the choice. Just like airline customers decide to book themselves on economy or first class. If you're in first class, the lines to board the plane are going to be much shorter. In our world, test scripts can "board" much faster on broadband, because test scripts finish faster (than on DSL), and therefore more of them can execute in a given time period.
Sometimes (and you know this from your own experience, unfortunately) airlines overbook their planes, and passengers have to be rescheduled or routed to a different plane. The speed at which the airline does directly relates to how satisfied their customers feel, during the rescheduling process. In a similar way, if too many test scripts are taking, say 5 minutes to execute, but they are supposed to execute every 2 minutes - overbooking happens. Other test scripts that were scheduled to run right after the first test completed, now cannot start. The system begins to feel like an overbooked flight.
Fortunately, this is where Eric and his team come in. They have spare computers, connected and ready to go, which can be brought online in an instant. Tests get re-directed to their spare computers, and everything begins humming again. This is like an airline where, if the flight is overbooked, you show up at the gate, and magically they open another counter for you where your check-in handled, and you are led to a new gate, with a new plane, and new staff.
Except you never even knew all this was happening in the background!
Now that's a good customer experience.
Relgolook is a productivity application for outlook users. Archival and email management for organizing and archiving relationships. Managed service provides online referral campaigns, online surveys, online polls, online test.
Posted by: vahila | March 09, 2009 at 12:26 AM