The problems experienced byNorthern Rock's website last week
highlight how critical it is for businesses to ensure their
websites continue to perform during unexpected peaks in
demand.
Northern Rock's website slowed down dramatically when hundreds
of thousands of anxious customers accessed it at the same time,
leaving many unable to view their accounts.
The failure added to the sense of public panic after Northern
Rock sought emergency funding from the
Bank of England, leaving customers desperate to get news about
their accounts.
Financial websites like Northern Rock's are critical not only
for banking customers that manage their accounts online, but also
as a source of information and updates.
Following the website problems, Northern Rock said in a message
to customers: "Thank you so much for your patience, particularly
when using our website which has been running very slowly due to
the number of people working online."
Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst firm Quocirca,
said, "It appears the bandwidth available to the Northern Rock
website was not enough, and the hardware supporting the website
could not handle the number of visitor requests.
"There are certain things that can be done to prepare for this,
such as web accelerators and timing systems that automatically take
people to another site specifically to tell them that they have not
been forgotten."
Nick Staib, an internet banking spokesman at
HSBC, said the bank has invested in technology to ensure its
website performs with dual site contingency and strong multiple
server resilience.
"Capacity is based on anticipated peak volumes several years
ahead. We are continually monitoring our data operations. Any
deviations are quickly escalated and investigated.
"We run many diagnostic tests, including dummy transactions,
through special test accounts to check real world performance
against service level agreements. We have added, and will continue
to add, extra capacity as and when required."
A spokesman at HBOS said, "We are continually reviewing the
architecture of the site to ensure that it meets our projected
customer activity levels while allowing for periods of "stretch"
where demand is higher than normal.
"As a large business, we also have contingency plans to cover
other eventualities and ensure customers' inconvenience would be
kept to a minimum should exceptional circumstances arise."