Credit monitoring agency beefing up online operations

27.03.2006
With more consumers monitoring their credit records online to fight fraud and protect themselves from identity theft, online credit monitoring service TrueCredit has decided to ramp up its Web infrastructure to keep pace with demand.

One of the biggest problems, according to Scott Metzger, CTO of TrueCredit, was that the company could see the top 25 user queries of its existing Oracle Corp. 9i databases at its Web site, but could not determine what applications were most affected by the queries. That meant loads couldn't accurately be monitored, balanced or modified to keep the TrueCredit site running smoothly as customer demands grew, he said.

To bolster its operations, TrueCredit is rolling out CoreFirst, transaction workload management software from New York-based OpTier Inc. The application allows TrueCredit to modify workloads on the fly and add other key features, including prioritization for tasks, to get the most out of the infrastructure it has in-house.

For San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based TrueCredit, a wholly owned subsidiary of credit information vendor TransUnion, the extra information from CoreFirst has helped streamline its infrastructure and make it more responsive for online customers, Metzger said.

'Now we can define a transaction and have it related to any application,' Metzger said. 'Those are things we can see with OpTier that we couldn't see previously.' If systems administrators see database loads increase by 30% over the previous day's operations, they can now see which application is putting that extra load on the database, which is a huge gain, he said. CoreFirst allows technicians to set performance monitors and notifications for various service levels so that adjustments can be made as needed to keep the site operating efficiently, he said.

CoreFirst also puts prioritization hooks into the databases, allowing IT workers to tell the application what tasks should get priority. 'They're able to allow us to define what application has priority over other applications' without having to buy more hardware and software, Metzger said. 'That's our motivation on the prioritization features.'