As websites launch and web services scale, having a keen understanding of the traffic load impacts becomes a key issue for many businesses. It is a performance function that has been given front page news exposure this week, with US media reporting on the failure of Federal and State health agency sites to meet online traffic demand for information on new health insurance arrangements. Swedish startup Load Impact – which has just established a US office in San Francisco – provides services to help avoid performance failure caused by traffic surges to websites, or error returns due to high levels of polling to API services.