For Software as a Service (SaaS)providers, it is crucial to provide performance and high availability, because if the service were to go down, none of its customers would be able to access their systems.

The Challenges
"We have built a Hybrid Web App called ‘Elements SBM' for Small Business Management," said Justin Bartak, Co-founder and CTO of Ntractive. "It includes a PIM (Personal Information Management), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for Mac OS X and the iPhone. We will also be releasing a Windows version in the near future."

"We knew that if we were to provide SaaS, successful delivery of our application would be business-critical. No prior solution was in place because we are building our infrastructure from the ground up. This gave us the freedom to look at all available providers, including F5 Networks, Coyote Point and Zeus Technology."

"We required a solution that was cost effective for us as a start-up company, but we also needed a solution that would grow with us. We also didn't want to purchase stacks of hardware that would be quickly outdated. We wanted to invest in a solution that was capable enough and flexible enough to grow as our business and applications changed, and could be scaled cost effectively as our traffic grew."

The Solution
"With our priorities, we just kept coming back to software as the answer, so ZXTM was exactly what we were looking for, especially because it can scale horizontally and vertically," said Bartak. "It really fits into our infrastructure. In addition to our Apple Xserve machines, we're using Cisco routers, Dell switches and two Dell PowerEdge1950 III Servers (2.83Ghz, Dual Quad-core) with 16GB Ram per server where ZXTM runs within Redhat Linux. Also in the mix, we run Apache 2.2, MySQL 5 and Lasso 8.5.

Although ZXTM runs in Redhat Linux on one of our Dell machines, it could easily be migrated to another server or even another environment if we choose to later.

"Since ours is an on-demand web solution, we needed to build a system that could scale to match our growth, and we are anticipating a lot of users. We currently have over 950 corporate customers globally that have signed-up for Elements SBM to date and we expect that number to sharply grow year to year."

The Benefits
Ntractive initially purchased ZXTM LB only to manage their hybrid web app "Elements SBM" because it was a cost-effective way to begin. It gave them a scalable solution because simply by upgrading their license key, the full set of ZXTM features could be unlocked as needed, without swapping out any hardware.

"As a SaaS provider, we required as much flexibility as possible. Being able to add new features to ZXTM later on, such as Rate Shaping, Content Caching and Bandwidth Management on-demand gives us the ability to quickly scale when needed. We really like having built-in languages like RuleBuilder^TM, TrafficScript^TM and Java^TM Extensions, which can give us the flexibility to manage traffic based on a set of our own business rules."

"We chose ZXTM because it's a solution that can scale globally, since we are already thinking about data centers in other counties. I like the fact that when we expand to have multiple data centers, ZXTM GLB is available for global load balancing. It makes us confident to know that we have something in place that can easily manage our applications and function as an extension to them."

"While aesthetic appeal isn't generally on a list of features and specs, my team and I really like ZXTM's GUI - it's beautiful!" concluded Bartak. "We're primarily Mac users, so we appreciate when form is as good as function."