Short test, big payoff

SOASTA and IBM cloud services help Lenovo enter mobile market

Every minute counts when it comes to creating new products and entering new markets. So when Lenovo decided they wanted to capitalize on the explosive growth taking place in the mobile device and services marketplace, they looked for a partner who could ensure their online platform was perfectly tuned to meet growing customer demand while taking minutes – if not hours – off their go-to-market schedule. Lenovo’s partner of choice? IBM.

As part of their growth strategy, Lenovo is expanding its portfolio of products and services by offering customers in China a new line of smart phones and tablets. The company also recently opened an online app store supported by an ecommerce platform designed to push content, applications and music to customers on demand.

Simulating 200,000 simultaneous online users

Before launching its new online store and ecommerce platform Lenovo needed to be certain its new offering would be resilient and scalable enough to withstand huge volumes of online visitors, not to mention multiple and simultaneous application downloads. Compounding matters, Lenovo lacked the appropriate tools, infrastructure and expertise to conduct this type of simulated performance testing.

To address Lenovo’s testing challenge and their compressed testing schedule, IBM proposed an integrated solution combining Performance Testing Services from GBS, along with the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise from GTS, powered by key SWG products such as: Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Service Request Manager, DB2 and the Websphere Application Server.

Testing results in a matter of hours, not weeks

The GBS team’s Performance Testing Service offering, which uses CloudTest technology from business partner SOASTA, created a way to simulate a range of application download scenarios. Each scenario allowed performance engineering resources to identify – in real time – potential bottlenecks and scalability issues in Lenovo’s server infrastructure, software stack and network.

Not only did these tests simulate the behavior and performance of hundreds of thousands of mobile devices connected to Lenovo’s site, they expedited the entire testing process from several weeks into a matter of hours. The IBM SmartCloud was used to simulate the load of 200,000 simultaneous users. This allowed Lenovo to access on demand capacity for the test, but they only had to pay for what they used.

For Lenovo’s Test Manager, John Li, such cost savings provided tremendous value in the testing process. “The load level that we need to reach is impossible to achieve with traditional testing methods, as it would be too expensive considering the cost of the tools and resources needed,” Li explains. “IBM’s service not only made it possible, but accomplished it in a mere three hours of testing,” he adds.

Thanks to IBM’s integrated cloud services solution, coupled with an expert client team from GBS, GTS and SWG, Lenovo is swiftly and smoothly entering China’s burgeoning mobile device marketplace.

For more information concerning this article, please contact Hastings, Laura J. (lhastin@us.ibm.com).

Don Thomas | Global Offering Leader, Application Virtualization & Cloud Services, Global Application Management Services | Mobile: (512)567-0747 | Email: donth@us.ibm.com