Enterprises (large and small) collectively spend $7B a year for software and hardware to manage the performance of their systems. Well here is the ugly little secret. Precious little of the spending for "APM" products and services has to do with what users or the business really cares about - measuring how well the applications they need work for them. A real end user experience management solution must must incorporate the following elements:
It must measure the experience delivered to the actual end users of the application system. Experience includes performance (response time), and the ability to track errors caused or experienced by the end user. This measurement of end user experience must be done for every production user of the application in question.
It must collect detailed performance and utilization data from every layer of the application system (presentation. business logic and database) and it must synthesize this data with the performance information collected about the end users.
It must be able to use applications level information in combination with infrastructure information (however collected) to be able to tell Systems Administrators if the problem is in the underlying infrastructure (network, server, OS, middleware), or in the application itself.
If the problem is in the application, it must be able to pinpoint the root cause of a performance degradation with a sufficient level of detail so that an application owner can go back to either the vendor or the in-house developer with proof that it is an application problem, and enough data to get the resolution process started.
In addition to gathering performance information across the application system, it must be able to verify the integrity of specific transactions (this is the valid role for scripts).
It must support at least one of the major web based applications architectures (.Net or J2EE).
We help enterprises identify the applications performance tools that they really need, and we help vendors meet the real need in the market. So, our focus is upon the unmet need for real end user experience management on the part of enterprises and the strategy development for vendors who desire to meet those needs.
