LogicMonitor

logicmonitor

Hey there, developer! This is . Feeling a need for speed? If your apps and websites are running slower than you'd like, it's time to kick performance into high gear. How would you like to optimize load times, boost response rates, and supercharge your code? Rahul We've compiled 21+ tried-and-true ways to optimize performance and make your software scream. From caching and compression to cleaning up your code and choosing the right tech stack, these tips will help you build blazing-fast apps that keep your users happy. What are you waiting for? Put the pedal to the metal and get ready to optimize! The Need for Speed Have you ever left a website because it took too long to load? Slow performance kills the user experience and costs businesses money. As a developer, website speed should be a top priority. Here are some ways to optimize performance: We’ve all been there - you click a link, the page starts loading, and loading, and loading...and you give up. Studies show that if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. The faster your site, the better the user experience, the higher your conversion rates, and the better your search rankings. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned A fast site means happy users, higher rankings, and a better bottom line. Keep optimizing and your users will keep coming back for more. Speed is king! Optimizing the Front-End To speed up your site, you need to optimize the front-end. This means making your , JavaScript, images, and markup as lean and mean as possible. CSS This removes whitespace and comments to reduce file size, and combining multiple files into one cuts down on HTTP requests. Use a tool like or to automate this. First, minify and combine your CSS and JS files. Grunt, Gulp Webpack This stores files in the browser so it doesn’t have to re-download them on repeat visits. Set expiration headers to indicate how long browsers can cache the files. Enable browser caching for static assets like CSS, JS, and images. (CDN) to serve static files. A CDN stores copies of your files around the world so visitors download from a server near them, speeding up load time. Many free and paid CDN options are available. Leverage a content delivery network Compress PNG and JPG files, use SVG for icons and logos, and the picture element to serve responsive images. This can significantly reduce page weight. Optimize your images. . Remove unnecessary tags, use CSS for styling, and make sure your markup is easy for browsers to parse. Minify your HTML too for extra optimization. Keep your HTML clean and semantic The faster your front-end loads, the better the user experience. Follow these best practices and your site will be speedy in no time. Users will appreciate how quickly your content loads and will likely return again and again. Optimizing performance is worth the effort! Streamlining the Back-End To optimize your back-end and make your app scream, a few tweaks to your database and server can go a long way. 6. Indexing Indexing your database tables and columns helps queries run faster by organizing the data in an easy-to-search format. Make sure indexes are added to columns frequently used in clauses, joins, and statements. For example, add an index to a “username” column to speed up lookups by username. WHERE ORDER BY 7. Query Optimization How you construct your queries can significantly impact performance. Keep queries as simple as possible, avoiding unnecessary nesting. Use to see how the database will execute the query and look for inefficient operations. Combine multiple queries into one when possible. For complex queries, sometimes restructuring them or adding temporary tables helps. EXPLAIN 8. Caching Caching stores query results in memory so the database isn’t hit with the same request multiple times. Use a caching layer like or to cache frequently queried data. Popular examples are user profiles, product info, and blog posts. Configure cache invalidation to keep the data fresh. Redis Memcached The key is the query and the value is the result. Store cached data in a hash map with a key-value store. (time-to-live) so the cache expires and queries the database again after a period of time. Set a TTL to regenerate the cache when it expires to avoid a flood of requests to the database. Use cache stampedes 9. Load Balancing For high-traffic apps, load balancing distributes traffic across multiple servers to prevent overloading a single server. A load balancer sits in front of your web servers and routes traffic between them. Popular options are and Load Balancing. Nginx, HAProxy, AWS Elastic Horizontal scaling adds more servers. Load balancers enable horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling adds more power to a single server. Non-sticky sessions forward requests at random. Sticky sessions forward requests from a user to the same server to maintain session data. from the load balancer. Use health checks to remove non-responsive servers Optimizing the back-end is an ongoing process of making incremental improvements and then measuring the impact. Keep tweaking and tuning to reach peak performance so your app runs as fast as possible. Code Efficiency and Performance To optimize the performance of your code, focus on making it as efficient as possible. Some key ways to boost efficiency and speed include: 10. Reduce Database Calls Every database call requires time and resources. Minimize the number of calls by fetching all the data you need in one query instead of multiple smaller queries. You can also cache data that is frequently accessed but rarely changes. 11. Avoid Unnecessary Loops Loops require iterations, which means more processing time. See if you can use built-in methods to , , reduce or extract data instead of writing your own loops. When you do need a loop, start from the end and work backward to exit the loop as early as possible. filter map 12. Optimize Algorithms The logic in your algorithms directly impacts performance. An algorithm will run much slower than an algorithm for large datasets. Look for ways to improve the time complexity of your algorithms by using techniques like memoization, pruning the search space, and parallelizing independent computations. O(n2) O(n) 13. Minimize Function Calls Each function call requires overhead to save state, jump to the function code, and return to the calling function. Inline small functions to avoid the call overhead altogether. Also, instead of value to avoid copying large objects. pass parameters by reference 14. Use Caching Store the results of expensive function calls and database queries in a cache. Then you can return the cached data instead of re-computing it, which saves time. Implement caching for parts of your system that remain relatively static. 15. Parallelize Tasks If you have tasks that can run independently, execute them in parallel to improve performance. Use threading in single-core machines or multiprocessing in multi-core machines. Make sure your tasks don't depend on shared memory or resources, otherwise, you'll encounter race conditions. 16. Choose Efficient Data Structures The data structures you select directly impact the performance of operations like searching, sorting, and inserting. Use hash tables for fast lookups, trees or heaps for fast sorting and priority queues, and linked lists or arrays for fast insertion and deletion. Choose the most optimal data structure for each task. Optimizing performance is an iterative process of making incremental improvements and then measuring the results to find the next bottleneck. Keep optimizing your code by reducing inefficiencies and you'll achieve significant gains in speed and efficiency. With practice, writing high-performance code will become second nature! Mobile Optimization When it comes to optimizing your site’s performance, mobile optimization should be at the top of your list. More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices, so making sure your site runs fast on smartphones and tablets is crucial. Here are some techniques to speed up your mobile experience: 17. Responsive Design Having a is key. This means your site dynamically adapts to different screen sizes, whether it’s a desktop, tablet, or phone. Your content should resize and restructure automatically based on the device. This provides an optimal viewing experience for your users on any device. responsive design 18. Adaptive Images Images are required for an engaging user experience, but they significantly impact load times, especially on mobile data connections. Adaptive images detect the screen size and bandwidth of the user and serve optimized image files accordingly. You may want to consider: Serving smaller image sizes for mobiles. Using that provide better compression. next-gen formats like WebP Adding width and height attributes to your image tags so the browser can calculate layouts even before the images load. 19. Mobile-Specific Caching Caching stores website data on the user's device so it can be accessed quickly on subsequent visits. For mobile, you'll want to enable mobile-specific caching which stores separate cached data for the mobile version of your site. This means mobile users don't have to download the desktop version first. You can use a header to specify how long the cached data should persist. "Cache-Control: max-age" 20. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) If you want to take mobile optimization to the next level, consider creating an accelerated mobile page or version of your content. AMPs are stripped-down versions of web pages designed to load nearly instantly on mobile devices. AMP They're also cached on Google's servers and displayed in special mobile search results. For many publishers, AMPs have led to significant and user engagement. increases in traffic Optimizing for mobile is well worth the effort. When your site runs fast and looks great on mobile, your users will have a much better experience. And that can translate into real business benefits like higher conversions, more pageviews, and increased customer loyalty. Performance Monitoring and Testing To ensure the peak performance of your website or web application, ongoing monitoring, and testing are essential. As a developer, you need to put in the work to identify any bottlenecks or issues slowing down your site before your users experience them. 21. Performance Monitoring Use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or New Relic to monitor metrics like your page load time, total page size, and a number of server requests. Check how optimized your site is for both mobile and desktop. Look for any obvious issues, like , or CSS, or . Set performance budgets and monitor to make sure your site stays within targets. large image sizes blocking JavaScript lack of browser caching 22. Load Testing Conduct load testing to see how your site performs under heavy user traffic. Use a tool like to simulate hundreds or thousands of virtual users accessing your site at once. Look for any performance issues, slow load times, or downtime as traffic increases. Fix any problems to ensure your infrastructure can handle spikes in traffic and prevent crashing. Apache JMeter 23. A/B Testing A/B testing allows you to optimize performance by comparing two versions of the same web page or feature. You show the two variants (A and B) to different groups of users to see which performs better based on metrics like load time, bounce rate, or conversions. The winning variant can then be implemented to improve the overall user experience. Even small changes, like rearranging page elements or simplifying navigation, can lead to performance gains. 24. Optimizing Third-Party Tools If you use third-party tools like , , or , make sure they are optimized for performance. Some provide "lite" versions that load faster. social media share buttons embedded maps chat functions Consider lazy loading them so they only appear as a user scrolls down the page. Remove any unnecessary widgets cluttering up your site. Keeping a close eye on how your site performs and regularly testing and optimizing is the key to speed. Small tweaks and fixes over time can add up to a much-improved user experience and better search engine rankings. Stay on top of the latest web performance best practices to keep your site running as efficiently as possible. Conclusion So there you have it, over 21+ ways to seriously boost your performance and get things done. Try implementing a few of these tips this week and see how much more productive you can be. Once you get into the habit, you'll be optimizing and accelerating in no time. Remember, the key is starting small by picking just one or two techniques to focus on so you don't get overwhelmed. Keep practicing and before you know it, speed and efficiency will become second nature. You've got this! Now stop reading and start optimizing - the faster, the better. Also published . here

Need for Speed: 21+ Website Performance Optimization Techniques

As the economy and inflation rise, more consumers are turning to alternative financial services such as fintech to manage their finances. This industry is expected to continue growing as it offers a wide range of products and services that are designed to meet the needs of modern consumers. Some of these include online banking, insurance, and digital lending. , consumer adoption of fintech companies and products has grown rapidly worldwide between 2015 and 2019. As of 2019, 75 percent of consumers globally have adopted some form of money transfer and/or payment service. According to Statista The rapid emergence and growth of financial technologies have raised the bar for the sector. This has led to various challenges, such as security and scalability. The various challenges that financial technology companies face have led to the goal of maintaining a steady stream of repeat customers. It took a long time for traditional banks to convince their consumers to trust them with their money. Despite the various challenges that financial technology companies face, there are still some technological solutions that can help them overcome these issues. One of the most important factors that financial technology companies should consider is the availability of cloud computing. This type of technology allows them to improve their security and flexibility while also increasing their global reach. Cloud computing is a type of hosting service that allows businesses to access various computing resources and services over the internet. The goal of cloud computing is to provide businesses with easy and scalable access to their IT resources. With the availability of cloud computing, financial technology companies can improve their efficiency and reduce their risk of experiencing delays in the supply chain. It can also provide them with a higher level of data protection. In addition, it can provide them with a more affordable level of system backup. Where do the best practices begin? Through the continuous evolution of cloud technology, fintech companies have been able to gain a deeper understanding of the advantages of cloud computing. They have also been able to establish best practices that will help them realize the full potential of this type of technology. These practices can be categorized into four broad themes: One of the most important factors that financial technology companies should consider when it comes to outsourcing their technology and operational functions is ensuring that they can still . Although it may be beneficial to outsource these functions, a regulated entity still has to establish policies and procedures that will help it manage its responsibilities. meet their regulatory obligations Before a firm can start implementing a new cloud application, it should make sure that the API it uses has the . This will allow it to quickly and easily integrate new applications into the cloud. necessary capabilities to support its operations As more workloads move to the cloud, it is critical that firms maintain their . The past few years have seen a significant increase in the number of attacks and the complexity of the financial markets’ cybersecurity. focus on the expansion of their resilience capabilities Best practices in Fintech , almost 90% of enterprises plan on moving their operations to the cloud by 2025. Some of the prominent banks that include Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Capital One. Goldman Sachs is even expected to launch its Financial Cloud for Data in partnership with Amazon Web Services. According to LogicMonitor have already started implementing the cloud Here are a few success stories for your inspiration: Auka + Google Cloud Auka, a fintech company based in Norway, is focused on providing a secure and reliable payment platform for banks and merchants. Through its platform, it has been able to grow its market share in Europe and become in the continent in 2016. In 2014, it launched the first mobile payment system in Norway using the cloud. one of the fastest-growing cloud-based companies Through its cloud platform, Auka was able to handle the increasing number of transactions that were made using mobile devices. It was also able to win the award for Best Mobile Payment Platform in Europe in 2017. This recognition was due to the company's decision . to base its operations on the cloud PWE Capital + MQL5 Cloud Network Parker Winston Eckhardt, a fintech company based in Australia, announced that it had adopted the MetaTrader 5 platform for its asset management division, PWE Capital. Through its use of algorithmic trading, PWE Capital aims to provide its clients with a modern and flexible platform for managing their assets. , the company's decision to adopt the platform was based on its ability to meet its client's needs and provide them with the best possible service. According to PWE Capital's CEO, Manas Kumaar is a component of the client terminal of the financial trading software known as MetaTrader 5. It is used to test the performance of the trading systems developed using the platform's programming language. Through backtests, the Strategy Tester can improve the efficiency of the trading systems written on MQL5 language by analyzing historical data. The MQL5 Cloud Network At the beginning of the year, the network had a total capacity of 34,000 cores, and it continues to grow. TransferWise (Wise) + AWS Since its inception, TransferWise has been able to grow its global business by providing a low-cost, global financial technology platform that enables people and businesses to move money around the world. Due to its ease of use and low cost, over six million individuals and businesses have switched to TransferWise from traditional providers. Due to the complexity of its operations, keeping up with its rapid growth. Its applications were hosted in on-premises data centers, which made it difficult to maintain continuous availability. TransferWise had a hard time The company also had a hard time keeping up with the rapid growth of its business due to the lack of space and the complexity of its operations. Thomas Hewer, TransferWise's technology lead, that the company wanted to grow globally without having to build partnerships with other data center partners. said To address these issues, TransferWise started its migration to the cloud by using a hybrid storage architecture. It to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Gateway. This service allows users to access cloud storage on-premises. moved its data backup environment With the help of Amazon Web Services’ hybrid storage architecture, TransferWise was able to scale its operations and keep up with its rapid growth. This allows the company to expand its services even more quickly as its business continues to grow.

Best Practices of Cloud Networks Usage in Fintech

Disclaimer: This is NOT a press release by Netflix. Just my honest review of tech that helps us binge great content without hassle. — , , , , and (formerly )—are known for creating addictive products and experiences that no user wants to let go of. Similarly, , Google Maps, or Amazon are admired by their users for how they solve daily problems or add value to our lives. FAANG Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix Alphabet Google Instagram Of the FAANG and FAANG-adjacent products included in the list above, I believe for being a technological marvel. Netflix isn't (comparatively) getting as much attention as it deserves Before writing this piece, I talked to a number of my colleagues, with whom I talk about tech and latest products from time to time. But never about Netflix. Netflix sure. shows, Netflix technology? Not as much. Maybe that’s the beauty of a truly magical product - users not even realising all the magic that’s happening. But it is. magic, Fair enough though, we are used to just passively WATCHING what’s being played in front on us. Whether you're a Peaky Blinders person or more of a MindHunter fan, chances are, you don't often give much thought to how it is you’re able to stream all of your favourite shows without any hassle. In this post, I unpack the Netflix model so you know more next time you get automatically sucked in to the next episode. Let’s get started! The OTT leader - NFLX With the digitization of video content, all new and existing OTT Platforms have been focusing on the simple formula of good content + latest recommendation algorithmic technologies = exceptional user experience. Of all the OTTs currently on the market, Netflix has no chill. Netflix believes in keeping the podiums of streaming technology and content at an equal level. The reason Netflix is top-of-mind the second someone talks about streaming content platforms, is its open-ended efforts of not only making the content widely accessible to all ranges of devices, but combining that with lesser network speed and data requirements, through cutting edge technology. Take the used by Netflix for an example. In early 2018, Netflix introduced its co-developed Dynamic Optimizer powered by AI techniques, which scrutinizes each frame of a video, then re-encodes, and compresses its size by an enormous amount without deteriorating its image quality. Dynamic Optimizer This increases their appeal to the Netflix users that stream content on portable devices like smartphones and tablets as they can use Netflix without exceeding their monthly bandwidth capacity. All of this is a result of amazing tech stack used by Netflix. Let’s take a look at Netflix’s robust tech stack and get a hold on the back-end reasons for its seamless user experience. Netflix Tech Stack Even with access to loads of highly addictive content, the success of an OTT provider wouldn’t be guaranteed if not backed up by a robust tech stack. To ensure an all-round support and compatibility, the Netflix tech stack comprises many programming languages (e.g. Java, JavaScript, Python, Kotlin and Swift). and security is owed to its use of Python. Kotlin imparts much required tooling support and also comes handy with other programming languages due to its interoperable nature. Python being the part of Netflix’s arsenal, also ensures the use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for features like user personalization and data-economical encoding respectively. Netflix’s much appreciated scaling culture Netflix tech stack also consists of utterly comprehensive libraries which polish user experience and frameworks to act as a spine for the development processes. The user friendly interfaces of Netflix are promised by Reactjs, the JavaScript UI library. It uses NodeJS as a framework and WinJS to facilitate the development of its Windows application. Being a digital content platform, Netflix tech stack has to consist of a backend tools, processes and architecture that shout competence and reliability through its reputation. Reliable Backend of Netflix Before 2008, Netflix used their own data centers to track customers, maintain inventory and customer billing. When they took the shot at cloud computing due to its advantages over data centers, they went with Amazon Web Services which seemed to be the perfect fit for Netflix in terms of security, scalability, flexibility and functionality. Netflix uses reliable Amazon EC2 Servers for cloud hosting and Amazon RDS and Amazon DynamoDB for Database-as-a-service. Apart from this, Dynomite acts as a Database Cluster Manager in Netflix tech stack. It offers great advantages by supporting pluggable persistent and in-memory storage engines.There are also tools like AWS elastic Transcoder used by Netflix to format videos appropriately which saves you from buffers. Netflix uses AWS for a plethora of services through different accounts for different aspects of their business such as subscriptions, content delivery and personalized recommendations. These multiple accounts in AWS ensure autonomy amongst teams and hence result in quick addition of features and updates. Apart from this, the sophisticated Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) also ensure quick deployment. Other Backend tools include Kafka which scrutinizes user history and stores data which can be accessed to compute personalized user recommendations through algorithms like Restricted Boltzmann Machines and SVD++. Spinnaker is another tool developed at Netflix’s inventory. it is an open source program which gives the developers room for experimentation and they can make small changes, test them over a subset of users and then implemented full-fledgedly after obliterating the bugs found during those automated tests. at Netflix - Tech Stack of Netflix DevOps Netflix tech stack may have all the important components, but it would still be incomplete without devops. Netflix tech stack and techniques are thoroughly drenched in DevOps. According to Dianne Marsh, director of engineering for engineering tools at Netflix, context is very important for the developers. It helps them wrap their head around the business needs and hence increases their productivity drastically. It also promises frequent and highly-automated code releases. Netflix tech stack uses GitHub for code collaboration and version control. This ensures that different teams get a hold of their responsibilities of themselves and their work and its impacts on the wider ecosystem. Jenkins is the part of the Netflix stack for ensuring Continuous Integration. Apart from this, Apache Mesos and Sumo Logic are used for Server Management and Log Management respectively. They also use Crittercism for mobile error monitoring and Boundary and LogicMonitor for Performance monitoring. Another great DevOps practice used at Netflix is building for failures. This means that they are finding new solutions for the plentitude of problems that can cause them downtime. For this, they have a tool called ‘Chaos Monkey’. All it does is randomly selects Netflix’s production instances and disables it so that their dedicated teams can find a solution to future proof any customer impact. Innovations in Content Production Even after having such a comprehensive tech stack of Netflix being a content creation company first and then a tech company, faces hindrance in adapting new technologies due to the fact that business of content creation is very, very slow to adapt to new technology. Although this slow acclimatization of the content creation business also gives Netflix an edge over its competitors. As Netflix is looking to put another leg into original content creation, it is amalgamating technology with content production to introduce tools for the production process. Tools like contacts manager and interactive breakdown tools for scripts can come in handy to the production crews. One such app that facilitates the production process is called Move which simplifies  crew management, scheduling shoots, etc. Conclusion With an ambitious innovation team, Netflix is the perfect example of a company keeping up with the . Apart from being a Digital Content Platform, Netflix surely will emerge as a leading tech company owing to its hefty investments and support in technology and innovation which is quite evident by its open source programs. pace of technological advances

Stories, News & Mentions about LOGICMONITOR

Logicmonitor’s Stories on HackerNoon