Economist CQ-Roll Call

Roll Call uses iProduction to ensure peak performance for its high-volume, online readers

A wholly-owned subsidiary of The Economist, CQ-Roll Call provides readers with up-to-the-minute news of the legislative and political maneuvers that happen every day on Capitol Hill. Founded in 1955 and widely considered the newspaper of Capitol Hill, Roll Call delivers breaking congressional news and behind-the-scenes intelligence on the people, politics and personalities of Capitol Hill. It also provides news and information that is considered indispensable for members of Congress and their staffs.

RollCall.com is the internet presence of the Roll Call newspaper.  The site’s content is free for people who work on Capitol Hill; other non-qualified readers may purchase a subscription.  Although much of the site’s content is controlled circulation, RollCall.com also offers a free component that often covers breaking news.  Because Roll Call frequently breaks big political news, its stories can be listed on high-volume sites such as The Drudge Report.  Thus, the site must be able to support a significant influx of visitor traffic which can, without notice, see an increase in page requests substantially larger than normal demand (also known as a slash-dot event).

Since 2000, iProduction had provided RollCall.com with a highly scalable, fault tolerant platform that can economically service both regular demand and peak demand using a cloud architecture.  Roll Call also participates in the iProduction web developer program through which RollCall.com web developers utilize iProduction’s open source template system to create and manage the design of the site.