Online News Publisher Cuts Home Page Load Time by 40 Percent

Microsoft Windows Server System
Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Online News Publisher Cuts Home Page Load Time by 40 Percent
Overview
Country or Region: Uruguay
Industry: Media and Entertainment
Customer Profile
Dolsur S.A. owns El Observador, one of the largest daily newspapers in Uruguay. In 1995, the paper became one of the first online news publishers in the country.
Business Situation
Dolsur S.A. wanted to provide a better user experience for its online readers, especially paying subscribers, however, its legacy Web server platform did not live up to these goals.
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
n More secure, robust server environment to expand its online business
n Faster home page downloads
n Improved customer satisfaction
n Extensible environment
n Reduced Web server maintenance / “Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 helped solve a significant performance issue—we have achieved an improvement of approximately 40 percent in home page download time. That makes our readers very happy.”
Alejandro Stendellis and Fabian D’alesio, IT Development, Dolsur S.A.
When Dolsur S.A. upgraded its Web server operating system to Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, its online readership saw immediate performance improvements, shaving up to 50 seconds off initial home page download. Now the company has a powerful, more secure environment on which to grow its online business—and it costs less to maintain.

Situation

In 2000, Dolsur upgraded its infrastructure when it rebuilt its computing platform. At the same time, the company redesigned Observa.com.uy to become a feature-rich news portal. Since then, Mio.com.uy has been integrated into the company’s infrastructure. All Web applications were supported by two Web servers running the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server operating system with Service Pack 3 and Internet Information Services (IIS) version 5.0. These applications received data from a cluster of Microsoft SQL Server™ version 7.0 databases. All servers are hosted at the company’s independent service provider (ISP) Netgate’s facility. However, IT staff at El Observador administers them remotely over a frame relay connection with Netgate.

Dolsur’s infrastructure could no longer support increased traffic, and the company wanted to improve the security and performance of the Web sites, while reducing the administration and support costs required to keep Web applications secure and stable. In the case of Observa.com.uy, a large home page with a high graphics content and many graphical frames ran about 350 kilobytes. Users were experiencing 60 to 70 second initial downloads.

However, the business department would not accept a Web site redesign in order to alleviate the problem. Dolsur wanted to improve the online experience for Observa.com.uy readers because they form the main target market for its subscription services. Although the Mio.com.uy site offered adequate performance, Dolsur wanted to further improve users’ experience because they were paying for a service that competitors offered for free. Dolsur had to take immediate steps to increase the performance and security of its Web site, or risk losing customers to other news portals. At the same time, the company wanted to simplify the administration of its Web server platform.

Solution

In partnership with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Urudata, Dolsur upgraded its three Web servers to the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system (the foundation of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software) and Internet Information Services version 6.0. The team from Urudata installed a virtual private network between El Observador headquarters and the ISP to enable remote administration.

In a second step, Mio.com.uy and Observa.com.uy were migrated together to the new server operating system. The migration went smoothly, and each application was tested thoroughly on a Web server at El Observador that mirrored the production site. During the migration, Dolsur was so impressed with the test results and improved performance speed that the company decided to migrate its free e-mail news delivery service from Linux to Windows Server 2003.

Benefits

With Windows Server 2003, Dolsur gained a powerful operating system that provided the company with all it needed to improve the performance, stability, and security of its Web applications. Observa.com.uy readers noticed a significant improvement when logging on to the Web site, with a reduction in wait time for the home page of as much as 40 percent (measured on a 128 kilobyte line). And instead of having to wait 25 seconds to load the home page, subscribers and readers are averaging only 19 seconds for the Mio.com.uy application. Log on times have been reduced from 19 seconds to 12 seconds.

Average performance improvements for initial load time and log on for Observa.com.uy are between one and three seconds. Improved customer experience will drive Dolsur’s subscription rates.

“Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 helped solve a significant performance issue—we have achieved an improvement of approximately 40 percent in home page download time. That makes our readers very happy,” explain Alejandro Stendellis and Fabian D’alesio, IT Development, Dolsur 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 page cache and partial page cache—have minimized unnecessary execution of ASP code, further improving the Web site’s performance. ASP.NET also allows developers to provide parameters for sections of the code to improve modularization, so that Dolsur will also avoid the need for so many graphical frames in its content pages.

“Windows Server 2003 has definitely entered the category of platforms for carrying out mission-critical applications. Even in comparison to Windows 2000 Server, the progress is remarkable,” concludes Juan Eduardo Arrarte, Technical Account Manager, Urudata, S.A.

Microsoft Windows Server System

Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server infrastructure software is designed to support end-to-end solutions built on the Windows Server operating system. Windows Server System creates an infrastructure based on integrated innovation, Microsoft's holistic approach to building products and solutions that are intrinsically designed to work together and interact seamlessly with other data and applications across your IT environment. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your business.

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