Quest Software helps Conte.it to improve Web Site performance by 30 percent with Foglight

ConTe.it, the Admiral Group’s third European company, providing car and motorbike insurance to customers online since 2008, has improved its web site efficiency, getting a rapid return on investment with Quest Foglight®. Admiral Group is a leader in the direct automobile liability insurance market in the UK and is listed in the London stock exchange.

ConTe.it team chose Quest Foglight since it allowed the IT department to understand performance reduction inefficiencies and to face these issues before they become more serious, thus improving its website and application usability.

ConTe.it sells its products directly to customers, relying solely on its website and on a call center based in Rome, therefore needing an effective web interface and optimal application performance. The company’s recent growth had led to a significant increase in both the number of applications to be monitored and their complexity, so that the basic monitoring was no longer sufficient. ConTe.it recognized the need for a powerful tool that would do more than simply monitor its infrastructure, applications and databases, giving an insight into the end-user experience as well.

In the few months since it has been using Foglight, ConTe.it has already noticed excellent, quantifiable results. In particular, Foglight’s real-time statistics on the end-user experience, which are immediately available to all appropriate internal staff, have enabled ConTe.it to quickly identify the root cause of emerging issues and resolve the problems.

“Foglight met all the technological aspects we were looking for in an APM solution,” said Raffaele Penna, IT Infrastructure Manager, ConTe.it. “We were really interested in this solution because it combines two very important aspects dear to us: database, Java and virtual infrastructure monitoring, and end-user monitoring. In just the two weeks of the POC, we were able to configure dashboards with statistical data and aggregate views of performance and of application and system health. Foglight was the only solution that was able to match all our expectations and needs.”

Foglight proactive approach to monitoring has already delivered significant cost savings to ConTe.it. Since implementing Foglight, ConTe.it has reduced inefficiencies in the quote request section of the website by 20 to 30 percent. “This result is really meaningful, because it is directly related to our core business”, noted Penna. “Inefficiencies such as customers hanging on for a long time with the call center, or with the website due to connection peaks, cost us tens of thousands of Euros per day. Foglight has allowed us to cut these losses and to get a rapid return on our investment.”

Before Foglight was implemented, troubleshooting was reactive instead of proactive, and required time from many more professional staff. “With Foglight, the company can see immediately when the end user is encountering a bad navigation experience on our portal, and understand whether this is related to database slowness or to an  application server that is not performing well,” said Penna.

Moreover, information provided by Foglight is useful not only to the IT department, but also to almost all of the company’s other departments. For instance, the number of users who visit a specific page or who abandon a particular page is valuable for the company’s business analysts. “Our goal is to provide each company department with customized dashboards to check the applications relevant for their responsibilities,” explained Penna.

ConTe.it has also been pleased with the support delivered by Quest Software. “We are extremely satisfied with the choice of Foglight and Quest,” said Penna. “In addition to all these real results, it’s really important to me to underline the high service level provided by Quest both in the POC phase and in the Foglight implementation. They have supported us, unlike other vendors, in all the project phases, and their commitment to us is unchanged.”

ConTe.it tested a number of application performance monitoring (APM) solutions on the market, including IBM ITCAM and CA Wily. After carefully comparing the results of several POCs, and following the recommendation of its trusted system integration provider, Filippetti, ConTe.it chose Foglight from Quest Software. Foglight’s single, intuitive interface enables ConTe.it IT professionals to detect and address performance degradation before it turns into a serious problem, improving web application usability.

“We are glad of the trust that ConTe.it has placed in Quest Software” states Alessio Lo Turco, Manager, System Consulting Quest Software Italia. “ConTe.it has obtained great results thanks to Foglight implementation and the success of the partnership between ConTe.it and Quest Software has been confirmed by the fact that ConTe.it has decided to invest more in our solutions. In fact, at the beginning of 2012, the company has expanded its use of Foglight by implementing Foglight Network Management System (NMS) and has also decided to employ Quest FXV component”.