Epson.com Grows Without Growing Pains

Executive Summary
Epson.com is the main web site for Epson North America and is designed to perform as both a corporate and a major e-commerce site. As online business expanded, Epson.com began to experience inconsistent site response. Understandably, a uniform user experience was a high priority in order to meet demand and stay competitive. With the installation of WebAccelerator™, the company now supports over 1 million page views per day. Epson.com has realized a dramatic and consistent increase in response time, from an average of 75 seconds to less than one second, regardless of traffic.

The Company
Epson is at the forefront of technological invention, manufacture and sales for information-related equipment (computers and peripherals). Founded in 1942, Epson follows the principle that corporations must be able to respond to any situation and that employees must recognize the need for innovation,  speed and change. With a vast product line available for purchase online, Epson.com was in danger of becoming a victim of its own success and needed to aggressively pursue a solution to their impending growing pains.

The Problem
Server utilization was increasing, resulting in inconsistent site response. Web requests would time out at peak traffic times. The IT group had to regularly power-cycle the servers as they repeatedly locked up under load. Making matters worse, a decision was made to standardize on a single technology base for all areas of the web site. This meant the server application now had to deal with 600,000 page views per day instead of the previous 200,000.