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|
Randy Hayes is beta testing his load-testing
service at Charles Schwab and Nasdaq to ensure their sites can
handle the masses. |
Capacity Calibration load-tests Web sites to
detect weaknesses |
| 2/5/2001 |
| By Stacey
Closser |
Randy Hayes is in the business of
causing stress — for his customers’ Web sites, anyway. The serial
entrepreneur has started three successful companies, two of which
are in the software-testing market.
In his fourth venture,
Hayes is going after the Web-site load-testing domain, having
developed a technology that can quickly determine a site’s breaking
point. Hayes and his colleagues have been working out of a rented
house in Richardson since July, having converted the living room
into a techno-office with sliding-door access to the
pool.
The Napster-esque peer-to-peer play, called Capacity Calibration, or CapCal, uses a network of agent
computers to provide load-test services for Web-site applications.
The company’s beta testers include industry bigwigs Charles Schwab
and Nasdaq, both of which stand to lose if their sites don’t respond
to users quickly and consistently.
Hayes developed a way for
the owner of any Web site to determine, in real time, exactly how
many simultaneous users it can handle before the response time
becomes unacceptable. CapCal offers the service online to customers
who wish to use it whenever they choose.
“The CapCal model
lets customers dynamically load test their Web sites … staging an
ever-increasing load to see what the site’s performance limits are,”
said Hayes, who estimates the Web load-testing market will reach $1
billion in 2003. “No matter how much traffic you expect, it’s
important to know that your site can handle it.”
Load-testing is an industry that currently operates in an
outdated way — companies run expensive software, which can cost
about $1 million, on their own computers, said Hayes. CapCal
provides a service where users essentially rent the network for as
long as they need it.
Users of CapCal’s patent-pending
technology log on to the site and report what combination of
simultaneous activity they’d like to test — product ordering, site
inquiries and profile changes, for example. The most common pattern
of testing involves increasing the load by a predetermined amount
until a specified error or response time is exceeded, or until the
highest number of designated users is reached.
The network
CapCal has in place consists of 50 computers, each of which can
simulate 100 to 150 users.
“That’s 5,000 users at once, all
doing different things, and most sites aren’t set up to handle more
than 2,000 (users simultaneously),” said Hayes.
To increase
the network, CapCal will use the existing grid of computers that
sits on desktops around the world. The company plans to pay for the
use of outside computers, which can run load tests and still perform
normally, according to Hayes. He’s contacted nonprofit organizations
and charities that might be interested in volunteering their
computers, as well as those owned by members, in exchange for
payment.
“We could expand our network several ways,” said
Wade Whitmer, who is focused on the business strategy of CapCal.
The company can pay people directly; give client companies a
discount for the use of their computers; give clients an annual
contract where they do the testing using their own network within a
firewall; or possibly partner with a telecommunications company that
would offer discounted Internet access rates to customers who
volunteer the use of their computers.
Whitman said CapCal
will be pursuing customers with high-traffic Web sites and those
that are always modifying or changing their sites.
CapCal
employs eight people, although Hayes expects to hire 15 more in the
coming months. Contracted professionals are doing most of the core
technology development in Austin. The company has secured funding
from friends and family, and plans to seek money from angel
investors or from a private placement, instead of garnering cash
from a venture-capital firm.
“The VC market, in general, is
completely on hold; it’s really not an attractive source of capital
right now,” said Hayes, who worked with VC investors when he
co-founded his first company, Petroware, a software company focused
on the oil and gas industry. |
| |