News

SDLC has teamed up with leading technology vendors to bring together an offering that enables its consultants to test, monitor and review every layer of a business system, from the desktop right through to storage spindles. There is nothing we cannot see!

In response to feedback from its clients, SDLC has brought together all of its performance-related resources into a single performance and capacity planning unit. By doing so, it is expected that SDLC’s offering in this area will be better understood by the client and the resources, both people and tools, will be managed more effectively. Subsequently, the delivery process will be enhanced and the client will receive greater value.

“In the past, performance testing was labour-intensive, complex and inefficient with no guarantee of usable results”, said Pete Stock, SDLC Solutions managing director. “The output was often not fully understood and results did not produce tangible benefits that could be directly linked to effort and cost. Supported by our technology partners, we can now offer clients a ‘starter pack’ that provides a snap-shot assessment of an application and identifies problem areas. The ‘starter pack’ is backed up with further services that can drill into the problem and provide solutions, if required.”

SDLC’s services include:

• Performance assessment: looks at an application and traces the time taken in all layers of the technology, thus identifying problems areas.
• Scalability tests: examines the potential for expansion and predicts where future bottlenecks will occur.
• Benchmarking and trend analysis reporting: establishes a benchmark and retests periodically to assess the overall trends of the application’s performance capability.
• Key performance indicator (KPI) and SLA monitoring services: constantly monitors service levels and reports on, or even automatically fixes, issues that are encountered.
• Troubleshooting: identifies and suggests fixes for performance issues.
• Code documentation and analysis: examines the underlying code in an application to identify performance bottlenecks; automatically creates code documentation if none exists.

Business benefits are numerous. A pro-active approach to performance and capacity testing can be taken, enabling clients to quickly identify and resolve performance or capacity issues and be more flexible in meeting the demands on their applications. Service level agreements (SLAs) soon become a positive experience as it is easier to determine the right levels in the first place.

As an added benefit, partnerships with leading technology vendors means SDLC is able to supply testing tools on a rental basis for the period of the consultancy. This means clients will always receive the right toolset for the job without having to outlay significant capital.

Pete concludes, “At SDLC, we work on the principle that everything must have a business purpose, so we concentrate on understanding the needs of each client and placing the service we deliver in that context. Every service starts with a business requirements session, and everything we do is driven towards giving business value. There are no surprises and the client retains full control throughout the project.”

With the complexity of delivering an application across multiple layers increasing with business criticality, mitigating risk and adding value needs a logical, yet cost-effective, solution. SDLC’s performance and capacity planning unit brings together a business focus, a structured process, skilled technicians and leading tools to deliver just that.