Software AG Case Studies Healthcare.gov in “Perfect Health” with Terracotta Bigmemory

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	Healthcare.gov in “Perfect Health” with Terracotta Bigmemory Software AG

Healthcare.gov in “Perfect Health” with Terracotta Bigmemory

Software AG

Technology Category	Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries	Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions	Business Operation
Use Cases	Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Remote Asset Management
Services	System Integration Software Design & Engineering Services
Challenge	HealthCare.gov, the official website of U.S. Affordable Care Act, was launched in 2013 to assist millions of uninsured Americans. However, the site was over budget and unreliable, fraught with technical difficulties. Citizens had only from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31 to use the site compare insurance options and sign up for 2014. The unexpectedly high number of visitors began to overload the site’s infrastructure. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services scrambled for answers from a variety of sources, including internal government experts, external programmers and industry partner, Software AG. The main challenge was to rapidly improve the performance of the website, assure a stable and scalable platform— especially during peak buying season, and increase site reliability so that no data’s lost. Read More
About Customer	HealthCare.gov is the official website of the U.S. Affordable Care Act. It is used by Americans to compare prices of health insurance plans, begin plan enrollment and find out if they qualify for government healthcare subsidies. The site was designed to assist millions of uninsured Americans. However, when the site went live on Oct. 1, 2013, it was over budget and unreliable, fraught with technical difficulties. Citizens had only from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31 to use the site to compare insurance options and sign up for 2014. The site is of great importance as it is used by millions of Americans to plan their healthcare needs. Read More
Solution	Software AG determined a lack of in-memory data caching was slowing website performance and recommended BigMemory, the core component of Software AG’s Terracotta platform. With Terracotta in place, HealthCare.gov performs like a workhorse. At the height of each enrollment season, the site expands into one of the world’s largest enterprise transaction-based sites, enabling millions to get the insurance they need. Terracotta enhanced what government teams were doing behind the scenes to expand the site’s hardware and storage platforms to accommodate more users. HealthCare.gov was able to rapidly expand its memory fabric platform horizontally and vertically by adding both more memory and more machines to the infrastructure. During open enrollment in 2016, HealthCare.gov expanded again to 44 Terracotta nodes, supporting 315 JBoss servers. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Remote Asset Management

Services

System Integration

Software Design & Engineering Services

Challenge

HealthCare.gov, the official website of U.S. Affordable Care Act, was launched in 2013 to assist millions of uninsured Americans. However, the site was over budget and unreliable, fraught with technical difficulties. Citizens had only from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31 to use the site compare insurance options and sign up for 2014. The unexpectedly high number of visitors began to overload the site’s infrastructure. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services scrambled for answers from a variety of sources, including internal government experts, external programmers and industry partner, Software AG. The main challenge was to rapidly improve the performance of the website, assure a stable and scalable platform— especially during peak buying season, and increase site reliability so that no data’s lost.

About Customer

HealthCare.gov is the official website of the U.S. Affordable Care Act. It is used by Americans to compare prices of health insurance plans, begin plan enrollment and find out if they qualify for government healthcare subsidies. The site was designed to assist millions of uninsured Americans. However, when the site went live on Oct. 1, 2013, it was over budget and unreliable, fraught with technical difficulties. Citizens had only from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31 to use the site to compare insurance options and sign up for 2014. The site is of great importance as it is used by millions of Americans to plan their healthcare needs.

Solution

Software AG determined a lack of in-memory data caching was slowing website performance and recommended BigMemory, the core component of Software AG’s Terracotta platform. With Terracotta in place, HealthCare.gov performs like a workhorse. At the height of each enrollment season, the site expands into one of the world’s largest enterprise transaction-based sites, enabling millions to get the insurance they need. Terracotta enhanced what government teams were doing behind the scenes to expand the site’s hardware and storage platforms to accommodate more users. HealthCare.gov was able to rapidly expand its memory fabric platform horizontally and vertically by adding both more memory and more machines to the infrastructure. During open enrollment in 2016, HealthCare.gov expanded again to 44 Terracotta nodes, supporting 315 JBoss servers.

Impact #1	Solution deployed fast
Impact #2	Site now scales easily to support hundreds of thousands concurrently
Impact #3	Improved reliability, thanks to BigMemory Fast Restart feature

Impact #1

Solution deployed fast

Impact #2

Site now scales easily to support hundreds of thousands concurrently

Impact #3

Improved reliability, thanks to BigMemory Fast Restart feature

Benefit #1	At the height of each enrollment season, the site expands into one of the world’s largest enterprise transaction-based sites, enabling millions to get the insurance they need.
Benefit #2	During peak usage when Americans were comparing and buying healthcare plans, HealthCare.gov processed 320,000 requests per minute and hosted up to 187,000 concurrent users.
Benefit #3	During open enrollment in 2016, HealthCare.gov expanded again to 44 Terracotta nodes, supporting 315 JBoss servers.

Benefit #1

At the height of each enrollment season, the site expands into one of the world’s largest enterprise transaction-based sites, enabling millions to get the insurance they need.

Benefit #2

During peak usage when Americans were comparing and buying healthcare plans, HealthCare.gov processed 320,000 requests per minute and hosted up to 187,000 concurrent users.

Benefit #3

During open enrollment in 2016, HealthCare.gov expanded again to 44 Terracotta nodes, supporting 315 JBoss servers.

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Overview

Healthcare.gov in “Perfect Health” with Terracotta Bigmemory

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit