French Social Security Administration Chooses Web Performance Over Open Source
Durham, NC – The Caisse Nationale d’Asurance Vieillesse (CNAV) is the French-equivalent of the Social Security Administration in the US, responsible for managing millions of pensions. After becoming disillusioned with the length of time it took to do a performance evaluation using the open source program OpenSTA, they evaluated the top seven commercial load testing solutions and chose Web Performance Load Tester™ because its "no scripting" approach cut their testing cycle to 1/4 to 1/5 of its previous time.
CNAV uses their public website to enable both employers and citizens to file forms and manage their pensions, so the web servers receive a very high number of users, especially when tax forms are due. CNAV started systematic performance testing early in their move to web-based systems according to Mr. Jean-Luc Orts, who told us "Not running performance and capacity tests could result in very expensive emergencies. There are only a few days for the employers to file
returns without encountering issues."
At first they used consultants to do the testing, but Orts found that "though efficient, the cost and the inflexibility quickly encouraged us to become self-sufficient in the area of load testing." They next tried OpenSTA, an open source load testing package for Windows, but found "…the product remains very basic. It can do plenty of things, but only with a programming language, which has an expensive development cost. For example, it was particularly tricky to write scripts to correctly handle the Oracle SSO (Single Sign-On) which is used on our portal."
There are many commercial load testing packages on the market, and CNAV tried the top seven, and eventually settled on Web Performance Load Tester. "Compared to the companies we evaluated (far from being exhaustive with seven candidate companies) Web Performance Load Tester stood out with the best quality/price ratio. The differences are obvious in terms or productivity, design, and presentation of the results. In using Web Performance, the development time for test scripts has been cut to 1/4 to 1/5 of how long it used to take."
But that wasn’t the only reason. "I also want to underline that its important to have careful and reactive support. Its an assessment that I have made since the beginning and which confirms my choice. With Kapitec (the representative of Web Performance in France) and Web Performance I notice a responsiveness that allows me to quickly progress with answers in less than one day, sometimes even half a day."
About Web Performance, Inc.
Web Performance, Inc., a Durham, NC company, is the creator of Web Performance Load Tester™ and Web Performance Analyzer™, web load and stress testing software. In business since 1999, a partial client list includes Airbus, BlueCross BlueShield, Deutche Bank, eBay, France Telecom, Goodwill Industries, General Dynamics, Lufthansa, Motorola, Polaroid, Toyota, Wells Fargo, Xerox, and the governments of the United States, France, and Canada as well as numerous state and local governments and universities.