Retail digital performance event recap: Key insights from IBM & Catchpoint

We hosted the first IBM and Catchpoint Retail Digital Performance event on Wednesday, March 19, 2025. The sessions offered practical, thought-provoking insights on speed, resilience, and user-centric design—giving attendees fresh strategies to improve digital experiences at scale.

Key takeaways from the event

Here are four essential lessons from the event that capture the spirit of improving digital performance and user experience.

1. Slow is the new down: Poor performance can be as detrimental as complete downtime, emphasizing the need for robust monitoring and optimization

2. Performance matters: Continually refining your website, DNS, applications, and overall Internet Stack is critical to stay ahead in today’s competitive market.

3. Collaboration is key: The partnership between IBM and Catchpoint is driving innovative solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing IT environments.

4. IPM + APM: Applications and sites have become increasingly complex and distributed, relying on multiple APIs and third-party components—areas where APM lacks visibility from the user’s perspective.

Speaker highlights

Next, take a look at the standout moments from our lineup of industry experts and see how their insights brought these lessons to life.

Gerardo Dada, CMO of Catchpoint, shared insights on why organizations must rethink monitoring in the modern cloud era to ensure internet performance issues don’t disrupt user experiences.

Terry Bernstein, Lead Product Manager of IBM NS1 discussed the critical role of speed and how selecting the right DNS vendor directly impacts business performance.  

‍Ben Ball, Product Marketing of IBM hosted the event and shared how IBM NS1 once again played a key role in supporting "The Big Game," ensuring seamless performance across all streams despite challenges in the digital delivery chain.  

‍Sergey Katsev, VP of Engineering at Catchpoint, delivered an insightful joint demo, showcasing how Catchpoint’s Synthetic data—powered by the world’s largest intelligent agent network—enhances IBM NS1 Pulsar to optimize traffic steering at a micro-regional level, continually improving user experience.

Fireside chat highlight

The fireside chat with Beyond.com’s Tim Mohlman and Catchpoint CEO & Co-Founder Mehdi Daoudi was a standout moment of the event. Tim shared how Catchpoint IPM helps optimize digital experiences for all users, emphasizing the importance of meeting customers where they are—many of whom don’t have the latest PCs or the fastest mobile devices.  

Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

What’s a moment where monitoring tools saved the day?

Tim Mohlman: A few years back, we had weird DNS issues—sporadic slowdowns, customers complaining, but our status page said everything was "healthy." We were using Dyn DNS and Akamai, but we couldn’t pin down the problem.

Then Catchpoint engineers stepped in. They set up custom tests and found a Level 10 DNS problem: a CNAME record tied to outdated Akamai PoPs. They handed us a screenshot with the smoking gun. Two days later, it was fixed. That moment taught us: If a human spots an issue before your monitoring does, you’ve failed.

How do you balance proactive monitoring with avoiding "alert fatigue"?

Tim: You have to monitor like you’re the customer. Don’t just check if the site’s "up"—ask:

• Is the page blank?

• Are ads blocking content?

• Can users actually check out?

We’re aggressive. We’d rather dial back alerts later than miss a critical failure. For example, we monitor every step of the e-commerce journey: search, cart, checkout, tax calculations. If 25% of customers can’t complete a purchase, that’s a revenue emergency—not just a "tech issue."

How do you handle third-party failures?

Tim: You design for resilience. A fiber line was cut in Chicago once—our Salt Lake data center looked fine, but East Coast revenue tanked. Now, we:

• Use circuit breakers to fail fast (e.g., silently drop broken product searches).

• Monitor globally, not just from our data center’s backyard.

• Pressure-test third parties. If Google Tag Manager crashes, can customers still checkout?

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s failing gracefully.

How do you convince stakeholders to invest in monitoring?

Tim: You tie it to revenue. Finance once asked, "Why monitor Akamai? We can’t fix it anyway." I replied: If a highway to your store is blocked, you find a detour—or lose sales.

We also share Catchpoint dashboards with execs. When they see a red line dip alongside revenue, it clicks. Data tells the story better than any pitch.

What’s the biggest cultural hurdle?

Tim: Silos. Teams used to pick their own monitoring tools—New Relic, Datadog, Catchpoint. During outages, nobody spoke the same language.

Now we push OpenTelemetry for vendor-agnostic data. Our first question to vendors: "Are you OpenTelemetry-compliant?" If not, we walk. Standardization lets us correlate data across tools and avoid "my dashboard says everything’s fine" fights.

Any final advice for teams starting fresh?

Tim: Treat monitoring like a customer journey. My wife shops our site—if she hits a bug, I hear about it at dinner. Test real workflows, not just uptime.

And automate. We once got sued because a manual report failed when its owner was hospitalized. If it’s critical, never rely on one person.

Mehdi: Thanks, Tim. Any parting thoughts?

Tim: Speed isn’t a feature—it’s the foundation of trust. If your site’s slow, customers will buy from a competitor… even if their prices are higher.

Networking dinner and next steps

The networking dinner provided an opportunity for attendees from Box, Costco, Beyond, IBM, Catchpoint, and more to connect, exchange insights from the day, and enjoy excellent food and drinks.  

A big thank you to all the attendees, speakers, and organizers for making this event a success! If you missed it, we hope to see you at the next one in London on April 30th.