Convergys Implements Radware Load Balancing for Better Network Performance

Radware recently announced that Convergys (News - Alert) would include its Alteon application to provide load balancing and call recording in its call centers. It will allow Convergys, which handles more than one million calls daily, to have a better system for dealing with planned and unplanned downtime and still handle its large volume of calls.

Cincinnati-based Convergys provides numerous services including customer care, analytics, BPO, sales, collections, and tech support in 58 languages to over 150 locations in 31 countries globally.

Tel Aviv-based Radware develops application delivery and cyber security solutions that allow data centers to load balance and protect against DDoS attacks. The company has some high profile customers including Ace Hardware, ADP, and Hewlett Packard.

According to a company case study, Radware (News - Alert) helped another well-known company, Papa John’s Pizza, improve its website performance and security with Alteon load balancers. About one-fourth of the chain’s orders come from mobile apps or online. If a page takes too long to load, customers will leave the site and order pizza from a competitor.

Papa John’s also had concerns about possible cyberattacks like DDoS, SQL injection, and HTTP flood. After implementing Alteon load balancers, the company noticed significant improvements in network performance and felt better protected against cyberattacks.

Although Convergys will be using Alteon load balancers to manage a call recording solution, it faces issues much like those Papa John’s encountered. From a high level perspective, DDoS and imbalanced network traffic are similar problems, although one is intentional and the other isn’t. Both involve unexpected surges in network traffic through infrastructure ill-equipped to handle them.

With 125,000 employees around the world and call volume of one million calls per month, Convergys is subject to major performance hits if any part of its system is down. So far, it has deployed 14 Alteon devices, supporting 90 VoIP call recorders at four of its six data centers. Without a load balancing mechanism like Alteon, downtime is much more likely and that is costly to a company like Convergys, which is heavily dependent on networks.