According to a blog post on Web Service Guard, downtime costs money and is considered by execs to be a "complete disaster". That may seem obvious to most of us developers/testers, but what is cool about the post is the summary of statistics.

The source of the data is Zeus Technology, which offers a pure software traffic management solution.

Read the post here: Downtime Would be a Complete Disaster

BTW, how many dollars is £10,000 in lost revenue? Wonder why they don't quote it in Euros?

I find it very interesting that "65 per cent of marketing professionals state that they rarely or never spend time with the IT department in order to prepare for potential peaks in website traffic."

My question: How much volume can their website handle?

Which leads to another question: Have they conducted stress testing to understand their website load limitations?

My guess: probably not. Most companies don't allocate budget for web stress testing because they don't see the value in it. Secondarily, the traditional tools are too expensive. Tertiarily (cool word), developers don't have excess server capacity at their disposal to test with open source load testing tools.

How many times have you read an article by a software testing engineer that ends with a conclusion like, "We testers need to add more value to the business"? Several, I'm sure. Me too. It is a very good point, and I agreed wholeheartedly!

My suggestion is for web application developers and QA pros to proactively reach out to the marketing execs. Build a relationship. Educate them on the value (i.e. lost clients and revenue) of stress testing their websites.

It may be inadvisable to walk into the first meeting with a request for budget to buy load testing tools, however it should be relatively easy to cost justify some resources for stress testing. You don't need to buy a $100k tool or buy the server horsepower, you can find an easy and inexpensive SaaS stress testing tool.

So pick up the phone and call your marketing exec. Make an appointment. Marketing folks are typically visual and verbal - email may not be the best way to catch their attention. Still, having some of these stats in your back pocket couldn't hurt when explaining the value of stress testing to them.