Monitoring the End User Experience

Response Times

System availability is a popular measurement of application stability. However, another method, user response times, can also be a valuable measurement. User response time is how your end user perceives your application performance. In multi-tiered environments, you can have difficulty determining when end users experience slower system responses.

Baseline Perceived Performance

The best way to monitor the end user experience is to identify core sets of users, geographical areas, and critical business transactions. You can then deploy a tool like Cuevision Network Monitor to key geographical areas. Next, you configure the software to perform critical business transactions much like your users would. The resulting data helps baseline your web application performance and identify slowdowns and trends.

Example: AnyTown Insurance Co.

The administrator named Joe at AnyTown Insurace company has two sets of end users:

• The call center agents accessed the company website internally to help telephone customers get quotes, file claims, and other general inquiries.
• Independent agents also use the website for similiar activities, but they are based in different locations throughout the state.
  
  Periodically, Joe receives complaints from users that quotes are taking a long time to process and pages are loading very slowly. When Joe would receives these calls, he diligently checks his monitoring tools for signs of problems, but has no luck in identifying anything. CPU and memory are fine with no errors listed in any log files. He can't find the problem.
  
  As a solution, Joe deploys Cuevision Network Monitor on a workstation in the call center and on another workstation that sits directly on the Internet segment. He sets up watches for critical transactions, such as processing quotes and querying the database. By analyzing the response times of the sites, he determines a performance baseline and identifies key slowdowns during the day, which are later attributed to database jobs. When Joe points out these slower system responses to the systems database administrator, the jobs are identified and rescheduled for less intrusive times of the day. Cuevision Network Monitor solves a complex and critical problem.

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