Published on 12-Nov-2011
"We have a demanding set of requirements and a tremendous number of requests per second. IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale gives us plenty of breathing room to add even more personalization features and applications." - Site architect, sports website
Customer:
A sports website
Industry:
Media & Entertainment
Deployment country:
United States
Overview
This company provides one of the largest and most comprehensive sports websites worldwide, ranking first in terms of average viewership.
Business need:
The company wanted to expand the menu of personalized features and applications on its website while eliminating latency.
Solution:
IBM WebSphere® eXtreme Scale software provides distributed object-caching capabilities that help ensure ample processing capacity with virtually no latency.
Benefits:
The solution enhances caching agility to help ensure that capacity can support peak demand times and future growth.
Case Study
This company provides one of the largest and most comprehensive sports websites worldwide, ranking first in terms of average viewership.
Challenge
This company’s site typically processes tens of thousands of user requests every second on its home page. The company has made it a priority to personalize each of these interactions to provide sports fans with niche content based on their individual preferences, such as favorite sports, teams and events. At the same time, the content must be accessible on all platforms, including mobile devices.
The requirements to deliver dynamic content and offer multiplatform accessibility, along with the desire to eliminate latency from the user experience, place extreme pressure on the company’s IT infrastructure and data-caching capacity. But the website was unable to store unique content for millions of visitors with its existing page-caching protocol. Furthermore, the protocol did not provide the necessary scalability as the company continued to expand the menu of personalized features and applications available to its users.
Solution
The company implemented IBM WebSphere® eXtreme Scale software to provide distributed object-caching capabilities that help deliver a highly personalized experience to users. The elastic scalability of the software allows it to dynamically optimize data storage and adapt to the size, configuration and demands placed on the company’s IT infrastructure. The application can automatically add or remove servers without downtime; when data usage increases, WebSphere eXtreme Scale software adds more servers and then automatically partitions the data. The software, which was implemented in just three months, helps eliminate bottlenecks and helps ensure that ample caching capacity is available to process spikes in usage and support plans for future site expansion. It also delivers the same infrastructure across multiple web properties and devices, including mobile devices.
Benefits
• Reduces response time by 90 percent, from 60 milliseconds to just 6 milliseconds
• Speeds data access, processing transactions with virtually no latency in the user experience
• Enhances caching agility to meet peak demand of up to 15,000 requests per second
For more information
To learn more about IBM WebSphere software, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:
ibm.com/websphere
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
WebSphere eXtreme Scale
Legal Information
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America November 2011 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and WebSphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. The information contained in this documentation is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this documentation, it is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBM’s current product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, this documentation or any other documentation. Nothing contained in this documentation is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from IBM (or its suppliers or licensors), or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM software. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. All customer examples described are presented as illustrations of how those customers have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics may vary by customer.