aCerno Serves Online Ads at Sub-Millisecond Speed

Foundry solutions help predictive, targeting ad network process tens of millions of dynamic, real-time online transactions per day.

Customer Quote

	"We can add WSM7 modules in the ServerIrons for increased application capacity, or put additional Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching modules in the BigIron to accommodate additional racks of servers. The Foundry equipment makes scaling very easy and affordable." Wayne Earl Director of Network Operations aCerno

Four years ago, aCerno was a gleam in the eyes of its co-founders. Their goal was to create a dynamic, predictive means of delivering targeted ads to online shoppers while they are shopping. The company's success hinged on the ability to gather and process analytical data within milliseconds. Once aCerno built the application—and found the right hardware to support it—the concept became reality.

Today, aCerno uses anonymous shopping data from a group of 450 brands and online retailers to predict which products more than 140 million online customers will be likely to purchase—and they do it on the fly. "We tell advertisers which ads will be most beneficial to which users, and it's all done completely anonymously," says Wayne Earl, aCerno's director of network operations. aCerno's network reaches more than 90 percent of all online shoppers and processes "tens of millions of online transactions per day," Earl says.

The Need for Speed
Processing speed and reliability are critical to aCerno. "Our applications are extremely complex on the back end, and they execute in times measured in milliseconds. From the time of the query to the time the ad is served has to be 150 milliseconds or less," Earl says. "The Foundry equipment makes that possible."

aCerno maintains two fully redundant data centers, one on each coast. The West Coast data center supports the Web infrastructure and handles the core analytic processing; the East Coast data center is dedicated to supporting the Web infrastructure. Each data center has two ServerIron® 450 Plus switches and one BigIron® RX-4 switch at the core. In addition, aCerno currently has six FastIron® Edge Switches (FESX) 448s—four out west and two in the east—plus a few other edge switches.

The BigIron RX-4 switch handles core switching and routing, and the ServerIron E450 Plus devices with Web switching modules (WSMs) support Web services and ensure load balancing and availability. The 448 switches deliver traffic between the Web application clusters and the core network. The data centers are built for redundancy, performance, and high availability.

"The Foundry equipment scales very well," Earl says. At peak traffic levels, cpu load is 3 percent to 5 percent of the ServerIron application load balancing capacity. During the busy holiday shopping season the peak load will triple, and Foundry can easily support the additional traffic.

Foundry gear also supports aCerno's future network growth—both vertical and horizontal. "We can add WSM7 modules in the ServerIrons for increased application capacity, or put additional Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching modules in the BigIron to accommodate additional racks of servers. The Foundry equipment makes scaling very easy and affordable," Earl says.

Business Model Relies on Foundry ServerIron
Because aCerno's Web services operate in sub-millisecond speeds, the company requires very high speed, low latency switching and routing capabilities throughout their network infrastructure. "We need very high performance and very high stability," Earl says. "If we're not meeting our service level agreements, our customers are unhappy and we can't generate revenue."

The FESX 448 switches perform 10 percent to 20 percent faster than the edge switches they replaced, and overall core switching and routing performance is about 30 percent faster than competitors' platforms, Earl says.

Support has been a dream. Foundry engineers are available and responsive, Earl says. "Senior Foundry engineers assist with the installation and configuration of new equipment, and partner with us in our network architecture and capacity growth brainstorming sessions," he says.

On top of that, Foundry's price was unbeatable. Other products that met aCerno's technical requirements cost as much as 50 percent to 60 percent more than Foundry gear.

With lower capital costs, Earl has more budget money to spend on staff and product research and development. Foundry's product stability has lowered operational costs, too. "The platform is rock solid. I'm not dealing with a lot of support tickets," he says.

The return on investment is not limited to the capital expenditure, Earl notes. "It's dollars saved, time saved, and increased productivity. Foundry has a lot of reliability enhancements that are not quantifiable. The equipment pays for itself many times over."