Online News Publisher Cuts Home Page Load Time by 40 Percent

Microsoft Windows Server System Customer Solution Case Study

Overview “Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 helped solve a Country or Region: Uruguay significant performance issue—we have achieved Industry: Media and Entertainment an improvement of approximately 40 percent in Customer Profile home page download time. That makes our Dolsur S.A. owns El Observador, one of the largest daily newspapers in Uruguay. readers very happy.” In 1995, the paper became one of the Alejandro Stendellis and Fabian D’alesio, IT Development, Dolsur S.A. first online news publishers in the country. When Dolsur S.A. upgraded its Web server operating system to Business Situation Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, its online readership saw Dolsur S.A. wanted to provide a better user experience for its online readers, immediate performance improvements, shaving up to 50 especially paying subscribers, however, seconds off initial home page download. Now the company has its legacy Web server platform did not live up to these goals. a powerful, more secure environment on which to grow its online business—and it costs less to maintain. Solution By migrating to Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, Web site performance increased dramatically, improving customers’ online experience. A more powerful set of tools reduced the IT resources required to manage the servers remotely.

Benefits  More secure, robust server environment to expand its online business  Faster home page downloads  Improved customer satisfaction  Extensible environment “Windows Server 2003 Situation risk losing customers to other news portals. In 2000, Dolsur upgraded its infrastructure At the same time, the company wanted to has definitely entered when it rebuilt its computing platform. At simplify the administration of its Web server the category of the same time, the company redesigned platform. Observa.com.uy to become a feature-rich platforms for carrying news portal. Since then, Mio.com.uy has Solution out mission-critical been integrated into the company’s In partnership with Microsoft Gold Certified infrastructure. All Web applications were Partner Urudata, Dolsur upgraded its three applications. Even in supported by two Web servers running the Web servers to the Microsoft Windows comparison to Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Server™ 2003 operating system (the operating system with Service Pack 3 and foundation of Microsoft Windows Server Windows 2000 Server, Internet Information Services (IIS) version System™ integrated server software) and the progress is 5.0. These applications received data from Internet Information Services version 6.0. a cluster of Microsoft SQL Server™ version The team from Urudata installed a virtual remarkable.” 7.0 databases. All servers are hosted at the private network between El Observador Juan Eduardo Arrarte, Technical Account company’s independent service provider headquarters and the ISP to enable remote Manager, Urudata, S.A. (ISP) Netgate’s facility. However, IT staff at administration. El Observador administers them remotely over a frame relay connection with Netgate. In a second step, Mio.com.uy and Observa.com.uy were migrated together to Dolsur’s infrastructure could no longer the new server operating system. The support increased traffic, and the company migration went smoothly, and each wanted to improve the security and application was tested thoroughly on a performance of the Web sites, while Web server at El Observador that mirrored reducing the administration and support the production site. During the migration, costs required to keep Web applications Dolsur was so impressed with the test secure and stable. In the case of results and improved performance speed Observa.com.uy, a large home page with a that the company decided to migrate its high graphics content and many graphical free e-mail news delivery service from frames ran about 350 kilobytes. Users were Linux to Windows Server 2003. experiencing 60 to 70 second initial downloads. Benefits With Windows Server 2003, Dolsur gained However, the business department would a powerful operating system that provided not accept a Web site redesign in order to the company with all it needed to improve alleviate the problem. Dolsur wanted to the performance, stability, and security of improve the online experience for its Web applications. Observa.com.uy Observa.com.uy readers because they readers noticed a significant improvement form the main target market for its when logging on to the Web site, with a subscription services. Although the reduction in wait time for the home page of Mio.com.uy site offered adequate as much as 40 percent (measured on a performance, Dolsur wanted to further 128 kilobyte line). And instead of having to improve users’ experience because they wait 25 seconds to load the home page, were paying for a service that competitors subscribers and readers are averaging only offered for free. Dolsur had to take 19 seconds for the Mio.com.uy application. immediate steps to increase the Log on times have been reduced from 19 performance and security of its Web site, or seconds to 12 seconds. page cache and partial page cache—have Average performance improvements for minimized unnecessary execution of ASP initial load time and log on for code, further improving the Web site’s Observa.com.uy are between one and performance. ASP.NET also allows three seconds. Improved customer developers to provide parameters for experience will drive Dolsur’s subscription sections of the code to improve rates. modularization, so that Dolsur will also avoid the need for so many graphical “Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 helped frames in its content pages. solve a significant performance issue—we have achieved an improvement of “Windows Server 2003 has definitely approximately 40 percent in home page entered the category of platforms for download time. That makes our readers carrying out mission-critical applications. very happy,” explain Alejandro Stendellis Even in comparison to Windows 2000 and Fabian D’alesio, IT Development, Server, the progress is remarkable,” Dolsur S.A. concludes Juan Eduardo Arrarte, Technical Account Manager, Urudata, S.A. Internet Information Services 6.0 provides fault tolerance, request queuing, and caching, and it comes out-of-the box in a locked-down state, improving security from the outset. With the earlier version, IIS 5.0, applications did not always properly dispose of data objects and the processor overloaded, causing customer complaints. With IIS 6.0 and the Worker Process Recycling capability, IIS 6.0 worker processes can be automatically recycled using a number of parameters, decreasing downtime and reducing maintenance costs.

“With Windows 2000 Server, we had to restart the applications manually in certain instances, but we haven’t done this once with Windows Server 2003 because of its process recycling capability,” explain Stendellis and D’alesio.

Windows Server 2003 is deeply imbued with Microsoft .NET technology, and this has allowed Dolsur to take advantage of the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft ASP.NET to help solve the problem of Observa.com.uy’s large home page, which couldn’t be redesigned. Reprogramming certain parts of the code and using ASP.NET resources—such as For More Information Microsoft Windows Server System For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Windows Server System products and services, call the Microsoft integrated server infrastructure software is Sales Information Center at (800) 426- designed to support end-to-end solutions 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft built on the Windows Server operating Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- system. Windows Server System creates 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- an infrastructure based on integrated of-hearing can reach Microsoft text innovation, Microsoft's holistic approach to telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) building products and solutions that are 892-5234 in the United States or (905) intrinsically designed to work together and 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 interact seamlessly with other data and United States and Canada, please applications across your IT environment. contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing To access information using the World operations, deliver a more secure and Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of For more information about Urudata your business. products and services, call (598 2) 900 7668 or visit the Web site at: For more information about Windows www.urudata.com Server System, go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem For more information about Dolsur S.A products and services, visit the Web site at: www.observador.com.uy/observa/default. aspx

Software and Services Partner  Products  Urudata − Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition  Technologies © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT − Microsoft ASP.NET MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Windows, the Windows logo, − Microsoft Internet Information Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation Services version 6.0 in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published November 2005