PointClick Technologies Uses Healthcare.gov As a Model For How Not To Launch a Website

RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Managed hosting and cloud provider PointClick Technologies today announced the release of a new eBook entitled: "How To Avoid A Disastrous Website Launch Like Healthcare.gov," which provides a look into six major mistakes that were made in the development and rollout of Healthcare.gov, the healthcare exchange website created by and operated under the United States federal government as per the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  (PPACA) or "Obamacare." The report can be found at http://www.pointclick.net/free-report-about-healthcaregov.html.

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The report was created to highlight the key mistakes made in the planning, development and deployment of the healthcare.gov site and help companies to learn from some of these mistakes. Inadequate performance testing, security holes and poor communication riddled this project from beginning to end. Chris Chodnicki, Co-Founder of R2i, a digital design, development and marketing agency, commented: "HealthCare.gov is a highly exposed, complex website with a critical purpose. With a vast amount of personal identifying information security is paramount.  Unfortunately, it was designed and developed with a lack of proper methodology, vision and foundation."

The frequent site crashes that plagued healthcare.gov in its early days was symptomatic of this lack of vision. According to published reports, the site could only handle a little more than a 1000 concurrent users on launch, while drawing nearly 250 times that amount. The lack of adequate load testing was surprising. "Load testing isn't like it used to be – it isn't hard, time consuming or expensive today. You just need to recognize that it is something that needs to be done. It's not optional anymore," said Ragnar Lonn, Founder and CEO, LoadImpact, a cloud-based performance testing service.

While there are many lessons to be learned from the launch of healthcare.gov, at the forefront would be the view that a cloud and hosting partner with a more active role in the project could have helped prevent many of these issues.  "We believe your hosting provider can and should play a more prominent role in the deployment of a new business-critical website or web application," said PointClick Technologies founder and CEO, Malik Khan.  "We compiled this report to show how working with a managed hosting provider like PointClick would have greatly improved the performance, security and stability of healthcare.gov."

To view the report, please visit: http://www.pointclick.net/free-report-about-healthcaregov.html

About PointClick Technologies

PointClick Technologies is a leading provider of enterprise-level Cloud, Hosting & IT infrastructure solutions and managed services, including a comprehensive security suite, disaster recovery and managed storage and backup solutions. PointClick delivers secure cloud solutions to healthcare organizations, SaaS and software development businesses, e-commerce sites and other security companies around North America.

For more information about the company, visit http://www.pointclick.net.

Media Contact: Dean Ara, Email, 1-855-646-8662

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SOURCE PointClick Technologies