Priceline.com

In addition to using Catchpoint’s widespread active observability locations and ISPs to observe multistep transactions, DNS services, and API calls, Priceline continuously benchmarks performance with industry peers to define appropriate goals to maintain its leadership position.

Using the in-depth analytics at their disposal, Priceline can automatically correlate internal data with active observability metrics to diagnose problems and rapidly find root causes across complex n-tier architectures, and to examine the impact of front-end code optimizations.

Additionally, the Hosts and Zones feature allows them to quickly troubleshoot underperforming components (third-party vendors, internal components, etc.), while the alerting platform makes them immediately aware of problems and bottlenecks.

On top of this straightforward approach to active observing and alerting, Priceline has greatly expanded its usage of the Catchpoint tool, taking advantage of advanced features that allow them to drive positive business outcomes across their digital platforms, delving into the areas below.

First-Mile Baseline Tests via Enterprise Nodes

To minimize the amount of “noise” from the Internet in their test results (i.e., issues with local ISPs, peering problems, etc.), Priceline deploys an Enterprise node in each of their data centers that sends tests out to the Internet, and then uses an override to force it back through their load balancers like any normal customer traffic.

However, because the two interfaces are just one hop apart from each other, this minimizes the amount of variability caused by the Internet, and gives them the closes view of what’s happening on their website.

Driving Infrastructure Changes via Request Overrides

When considering whether to deploy new servers, make changes to their cloud providers, or evaluate a new CDN, Priceline is able to use the request override feature within Catchpoint to create a “What if?” scenario and determine what effect the proposed change will have on their end user experience.

One example of this would be by using DNS overrides to send the test to a specific CDN that’s been configured to support the new traffic, then running those tests in parallel with the ones that are set up with their normal configuration and comparing the data directly in the Catchpoint portal to see the variant between the two scenarios.

The request override can also be used to determine the impact of a specific third-party element on the site. This is particularly useful for a company like Priceline, which features a wealth of third-party content from travel vendors. They also deploy the request delay feature, which allows them to specify a number of milliseconds to determine if there is asynchronous loading dependent upon the object, and whether its delay would affect other elements on the page.

SLA Monitoring

Due to SLAs that Priceline has with both external customers and vendors, they must provide regular reports for how their digital systems are performing.

Using Catchpoint’s SLA Observability tool, they are able to set tests with alerts tied to the specific thresholds determined by their different SLAs. This allows them to track whether they’re within those service levels and receive alerts that fire before the thresholds are breached.

This way, if things are headed in the wrong direction, they’re able to act on it before breaching the SLA.

Long-Term Trending

Performance professionals can often lose sight of the long-term perspective in the course of their day-to-day firefighting operations. Priceline is able to mitigate this risk with the help of Catchpoint’s historical data storage, which they tie to hard KPIs as opposed to trend-related ones.

By setting alerts on those absolute values, they’re able to track long-term performance over time. They get alerted about gradual performance degradation even if it never triggered any significant spikes.

With three years’ worth of stored data at their disposal, Priceline can compare long-term historical trends with short-term KPIs to ensure consistently excellent user experience.

Integrations with Key Tools

While Catchpoint has become the primary cog in Priceline’s digital experience observability efforts, it’s not the only tool they use. That means it must be able to work in tandem with the others. Therefore, the integrations that Catchpoint has set up with other SaaS products have become vital to Priceline’s day-to-day operations:

• Splunk - Priceline uses a Catchpoint-provided add-on to push their data into Splunk, making it easy to overlay the synthetic test data from Catchpoint with the internal metrics available on Splunk.
• Slack - Using the Webhook API along with the Slack integration, Priceline pushes their alerts into a dedicated Slack channel, providing them with an easy way to view, share, and store reports internally without having to go into the Catchpoint portal.
• Okta - Like many enterprise companies, there are many individuals across several teams that must be able to access the Catchpoint portal. Using the Okta integration for single sign-on capability, Priceline’s administrators don’t have to worry about provisioning individual users or worrying about restricting access whenever someone leaves the company.