Building materials e-retailer saves 15% of IT budget with performance tool

For nearly a year, BuildDirect tried without success to identify the issues that were causing web pages to load slowly. Its technical personnel suspected the delays were related to third-party applications integrated into the web site, but they couldn’t pinpoint the problem, even after trying several diagnostic tools, says Dan Brodie, director of IT at the online manufacturer and retailer of building materials.

Then BuildDirect installed a performance-monitoring product called TrueView from Symphoniq Corp. The result? “We quickly and easily identified that stored procedures in our database were responsible for the longer page load times.”

BuildDirect now uses TrueView to monitor the web site’s production environment and any hardware or coding changes to the site. “By immediately being able to identify performance-related issues, we estimate a savings of approximately 15% of our information technology department’s annual budget,” Brodie says.

Symphoniq introduced in April version 2.0 of TrueView, which traces performance issues from a user’s browser back through the content delivery chain and the web site operator’s data center. Implementing the technology for a medium-sized web site costs about $25,000, Symphoniq says.