HELP my LMS / LXP Learning App is slow, what questions can I ask my supplier?

In the set up phase, prior to launch you will need to do some User Acceptance Testing, amongst other things you should be looking at the performance of the LMS / LXP and how quickly it responds to user tasks.

In this blog I will be looking at what things you need to know that will effect the speed and performance of your LMS / LXP so that you can talk to your provider about how they can improve it.

When it comes to the speed in which your LMS loads your content, it’s important to consider the size and complexity of your content library . If your website contains a lot of content, including videos, images, and other large files, it can impact the speed of your website. The start point is to ask your provider, what the optimal file size is for your content and try to compress all images and videos in line with recommendations.

The speed of your LMS / LXP will be impacted by where and how the server is located and configured. Make sure your hosting provider is using the latest technologies, such as SSDs or high-end processors, ideally you want to be on one of the major cloud service providers ie AWS or Google Cloud Platform as they have many tools that allow diagnostics to be run. Many LMS / LXPs are on shared servers, if you are a large corporate you may want to look at having a dedicated server. This will give you additional security and may improve the speed of your service.

Just for clarity, when your prover says they host in the cloud...you may be asking, what does that actually mean? The cloud refers to service that are accessed over the Internet and the software and databases that run on those servers.?Cloud servers are located in data centres all over the world. By using cloud computing your provider will not have to manage physical service themselves or run software applications on their own machines. ?

Hosting applications in the cloud reduces costs, as cloud computing makes use of a technology called virtualisation.?Virtualisation allows the creation of multiple virtual environments within one host machine.?This allows multiple virtual machines to operate on one host machine but not interact at all.?Cost saving come from these virtual machines making more efficient use of the hardware hosting them due to virtualisation even if individual servers go down cloud servers in general should always be online and always available.

Most likely your learning platform will be hosted in the cloud, this allows your provider to do frequent releases as they will not have to come onto your premises to do new releases simulatiously across all instances.? Hosting in the cloud gives your suppliers the opportunity to squash bugs and develop new features quicker.? It worth asking your learning technologies provider how often they do patches and formal releases and what their processes are for managing the communications surrounding releases.?

So lets assume its not the server... what else can it be?

Well if your on a closed network, and your team are using the LMS in the same location or though a company VPN, it could be a bandwidth issue. Bandwidth - the bandwidth that your business needs to run learning management system depends on several factors such as how many employees you have and how many business applications use the same bandwidth.?A company that process is a lot of information and has only one common internet connection may struggle to stream large e-learning files and high quality videos.?

Larger bandwidth will also be a requirement if your learning environment is highly social and collaborative. If your bandwidth is too small or insufficient, your network will become overloaded with requests and will slow down eventually crashing.?It is important to note that bandwidth requirements increase the richer the multi media environment and the more highly engaged and active the learner community.?If you are embarking on VR or AR projects bandwidth must be planned in.?We have seen cases where our customers use the same Internet connection for multiple business applications, invariably those business applications to do with billing and processing payments override learning systems so it is worth understanding how bandwidth within your organisations different locations is managed.

So if its not bandwidth, and its not your server what could it be?

Ask your supplier if there is a CDN on your server. CDN or content delivery network - a content delivery network is a group of worldwide geographically distributed service they provide cached Internet content from a network location closest to a user to speed up its delivery.?The CDN makes the transfer of assets needed to load the web application a mobile application and Internet content such as videos images HTML pages quicker.?A CDN is a network of servers linked together with the goal of delivering content as quickly and cheaply reliably and securely as possible.?In order to improve speed and connectivity CDN will play servers at the exchange points between different networks. A CDN is vital if your LMS is hosting in one country but are delivering to leaners in multiple countries.

OK, so if I have a CDN, my bandwidth is fine and my server is big enough and correctly configured... and its still slow what can it be? Its likely to be the code or the database.

For the code ask your supplier to run a Sonar Qube report on code quality that might help illuminate areas of code that can be improved. For the database you can ask them to run a script to assess how fast the code is collecting information from the database and if its getting overloaded.

Making your learning platform perform like a Ferrari is a journey, its an art not a science. The important thing is that you are using tools such as Google PageSpeed to constantly measure improvements and performance.

Hope that helps in navigating the journey to being a learning technologies expert!