Compuware accelerates Mondi Group's global collaboration tool - Innovation Zone - by up to 300 percent

Compuware accelerates Mondi Group's global collaboration tool - Innovation Zone - by up to 300 percent Management and staff in 46 countries around the world where Mondi Group is active, are encouraged to share ideas that have the potential to result in improved efficiencies. The engine driving this procedure is called Innovation Zone, a collaboration tool which has been running at the company for several years and is regarded as mission critical application software. However, it needed some serious attention to its flagging performance and Compuware's ApplicationVantage was selected to provide this function.

Defining the problem

Mondi's Innovation Zone collaboration application tool was rewritten after it failed to perform, even with only a handful of users. Being a web-based application, this was particularly distressing.

Prior to deploying the new format, Mondi needed to be assured that it would perform satisfactorily and requested its IT consultant partner, IT Ecology, to perform the necessary testing. As a global collaboration application, failure of the rewritten product would have meant an unacceptable waste of money, resources and lost productivity - the very reasons for the software's existence.

After checking the efficiencies of the application's initial release, albeit in a test environment, IT Ecology realised that significant scalability issues existed on the part of the database as well as on the Web pages. This showed that the database server was not coping with just a few transactions and that traffic volume per transaction was way too high for an intranet-based application across international links.

When the first version of the application was released, IT Ecology, together with Compuware, found some fundamental coding problems that caused it to perform extremely poorly. Tests on the second release uncovered more problems which were taken care of and retested, while the third cycle proved that Innovation Zone was now ready to go into production.

The Compuware solution

Dirk Loosen, a consultant at IT Ecology, explains that the two companies provided three months of ad-hoc load testing and network profiling services.

"Critical transactions were recorded and scripted and load tests were run in a test environment against a server scaled similarly to the production server.The web and database servers were equipped with Compuware ServerVantage to show where bottlenecks occurred during varying loads," he says.

Loosen says network packet traces were also taken in the test environment of each of the transactions for analysis. This enabled the team to predict how the transactions would perform under specific network conditions and what minimum bandwidth was required to run these transactions successfully.

"We took a phased approach and conducted the performance test and application tuning in three iterations. Once all tests were completed, the Innovation Zone application was certified ready for production and is now running successfully across the Mondi intranet. Users can now share ideas across the globe rapidly with quick decision-making processes in place," he adds.

Compuware's Vantage provides performance management from an application perspective. Its in-depth inspection of network traffic uncovers a wealth of information about how an IT infrastructure is performing, including which users the infrastructure is serving, what applications demand the most resources and how to troubleshoot complex application performance problems.

It helps IT managers to ensure the network and its applications are being used for the intended purposes and delivers effective WAN management, including the elimination of unnecessary use. Additionally, it allows for rapid performance problem identification and resolutions. Using the technology, Mondi has minimised the occurrence of network performance problems, while it helps to prevent future problems.

Mondi Group

Mondi Group comprises two separate businesses - Mondi Business Paper and Mondi Packaging. This structure allows the group to improve its visibility to customers, offer wide geographic coverage with operations in 46 countries and reduce its overhead costs.

The group has trebled its turnover over the last six years to $7 billion per annum. The growth of this dynamic business has been built on a formula for success that includes operational excellence, the aggressive acquisition of excellent Central and Eastern European assets and successful investments with improved technology. This means that Mondi today has a highly competitive cost base in Europe and South Africa, while it continues to adhere to high-quality standards.

Mondi offers a highly challenging and interesting work environment. It strives to reward excellent employee commitment by offering career development opportunities throughout the group and world-class training through Mondi Academy.

IT Ecology:

IT Ecology is a supplier of specialised application performance testing services utilising primarily Compuware Vantage tools to deliver consulting services such as service level monitoring, transaction troubleshooting, network application baselining, server application baselining, application load testing, application profiling & predictive analysis and network capacity planning. IT Ecology is a Compuware Authorised Consultant and as such consultants are trained on the various solutions which Compuware offer in this space so that the maximum value may be derived by its clients.
Learn more about IT Ecology at: http://www.itecology.co.za.

Prepared By: John van der Meer