Spring 2011 Release

Compuware addresses the APM challenge by enabling organizations to optimize performance and rapidly resolve performance problems for web, non-web, mobile and cloud-based applications.

1. What are the key enhancements in this release of the Gomez Platform?

   The Gomez Platform Spring Release 2011 includes many enhancements across both our Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-premises products.

   • Enhanced Gomez Portal
     Upgrades to dashboards and charting include a new Test Search function, enabling you to easily search for tests across multiple products —Backbone, Last Mile, Mobile, First Mile and Benchmarks — allowing you to effectively navigate to traditional charting and the new One Chart. One Chart enables you to chart multiple selected tests across many dimensions (geography, browsers, ISPs). A new version of the Operations Dashboard provides improved visibility of root-cause analysis and business impact.
   • New Gomez Real-User Monitoring - Mobile
     The industry’s first Mobile RUM solution lets you understand the actual performance of mobile end users across all devices. Similar to Real-User Monitoring - Browser (formerly called Actual Experience), Mobile Real-User Monitoring leverages a specially designed tag implemented in the mobile web application or native application to provide performance metrics of real users in the field.
   • New Gomez Mobile Readiness Assessment
     Provides an automatic assessment of the readiness of your web site for mobile visitors by scoring your site against a set of standards and suggesting areas of improvement.
   • New Gomez RUM Performance Conversion Analytics
     Directly shows the impact of poor performance on conversions by enabling you to define a business-critical transaction and correlate performance with abandonment along each step of the transaction. For every step, Gomez records the number of users who have a satisfying, tolerating or frustrating experience.
   • New Gomez Recorder integration with Google Page Speed
     The first and only integration with Google Page Speed enables you to optimize application performance. As you playback transactions in the Gomez Recorder, Google Page Speed automatically assesses performance against a set of rules, providing a specific score and analysis of your web pages. This allows you to optimize your web pages based on industry best practices.
   • New High-Volume Load Testing Agent
     In addition to current Gomez solutions for creating real browser and mobile device/browser load, Gomez Web Load Testing (formerly called Reality Load)now offers a highly scalable HTTP load agent. With scripts generated from the Gomez Recorder, the new agent enables self-service load testing up to millions of page views per hour. The new agent can be run in conjunction with real browsers from the Gomez Last Mile for unprecedented accuracy in user-experience measurement combined with the highest volumes of cloud load generation.
   • Enhanced Gomez On-Premises Platform
     Enhancements to Gomez Business Service Manager (formerly called Vantage Service Manager), Gomez Real-User Monitoring – Data Center (formerly called Vantage Real-User Monitoring), and Gomez Java and .NET Monitoring (formerly called Vantage for Java and NET Monitoring) delivering expanded depth and breadth of visibility across the application delivery chain.
   • New Gomez On-Premises Hardware Gold Standard – Cisco Unified Compute System
     Compuware has certified and optimized our on-premises software to integrate with and run on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). We have entered into a Strategic Technology Integration (STI) agreement whereby Compuware will be the OEM and authorized manufacturer to sell and recommend Cisco UCS to run all on-premises Gomez APM solutions. 

2. When will the Gomez Spring Release be available?

   The spring release will be available to Gomez customers on May 10, 2011, and will be publically announced on May 17.

3. Why did Compuware decide to rebrand its APM solutions to the Gomez name?

   Our APM solutions are now under one brand name to convey the integrated and unified nature of the Compuware APM product line. All Compuware APM products work together to provide a unified “First Mile to Last Mile” solution across the application delivery chain. The Gomez product line includes both our on-premises solutions (formerly branded “Vantage”) and our SaaS-based solutions.

4. How does the rebranding affect the product line formerly known as Vantage?

   All Vantage products are simply being renamed under our unified Gomez product line.  Vantage was named by Gartner as a “leader” in the 2010 APM Magic Quadrant, and continues to be core and essential to Compuware. Compuware’s APM strategy is based on the combined strengths of Vantage and Gomez, now branded uniformly under the Gomez brand label. Our combined offering provides the most comprehensive solution in the industry, providing both the broadest coverage across the application delivery chain and the most complete deep-dive diagnostics – from the  “First Mile” (the data center) to the “Last Mile” (the end users).

5. Why are product names changing and what are they?

   Product names are changing to become more descriptive and simpler to understand. For instance, the product formerly called “Reality Load” is changing to “Gomez Web Load Testing.” Similarly, “Application Vantage” is now called “Gomez Transaction Trace Analysis.”

   The table below lists both the former name and rebranded name for all Compuware APM products. 

   Former Name	Rebranded Name
   Vantage Real-User Monitoring (aka Agentless)	Gomez Real-User Monitoring – Data Center
   Vantage Active User Monitoring	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Private Enterprise
   Vantage Service Manager	Gomez Business Service Manager
   Vantage for Server Monitoring	Gomez Server Monitoring
   Vantage for Network Monitoring	Gomez Network Performance Monitoring
   Vantage for Java and .NET Monitoring	Gomez Java and .NET Monitoring
   Application Vantage	Gomez Transaction Trace Analysis
   Vantage Service Check	Gomez Mobile Carrier Data Monitoring
   Gomez Actual XF	Gomez Real-User Monitoring – Browser
   New product	Gomez Real-User Monitoring – Mobile
   Gomez Active Streaming XF	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Streaming
   Gomez Active Mobile	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Mobile
   Gomez Active Last Mile XF	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Last Mile
   Gomez Active Network XF	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Backbone
   Gomez Private Location XF	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Private Last Mile
   Gomez Private Network XF	Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Private Backbone
   Gomez Reality Load XF	Gomez Web Load Testing
   Gomez Reality View XF	Gomez Cross-Browser Testing

6. Where can I find information on Compuware’s APM products on the web site? And how can I access customer support?

   The traditional Gomez and Compuware web sites will merge on May 17 into a single site and can be accessed here: http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/index.html. On this site, you can access complete information for all Compuware APM solutions. To access customer support for all APM products, go to http://www.compuware.com/application-performance-management/support.html.

7. How has logging in to the Gomez Performance Network (GPN) changed?

   The GPN login has not changed.  Login via http://www.gomeznetworks.com/ or from the Gomez SaaS Portal Login option on the service menu. The url www.Gomez.com will automatically redirect to the new Compuware APM web site.

8. What major trends and priorities are driving Gomez product plans?

   A number of key industry and technology trends are driving Compuware product plans. They all relate to our primary goal of helping customers manage the complexity of the application delivery chain and deliver high-performing, quality web and mobile applications.

• We believe that performance is in the eyes of the end user, meaning the only way to truly understand the impact of application performance is by monitoring it from the end user’s perspective. This is true whether the end user is a customer accessing an e-commerce or banking application over the web, an employee using a CRM or ERP application, or a business partner remotely accessing a collaboration application over a WAN. Today, applications are delivered along a complex application delivery chain that goes through multiple application and infrastructure tiers that are increasingly extending well beyond the firewall of the traditional data center. Web applications come together at the browser, with components delivered both from the servers in your data center as well as external third-party and cloud-based content and services (e.g., content delivery networks (CDNs), ad delivery networks, web analytics and shopping carts). Traditional performance monitoring techniques will not provide meaningful measurements unless they are always understood in the context of the end user’s experience. Today, you need detailed performance and diagnostic information along the entire delivery chain to manage and optimize the experience of your end users. Our goal is to provide you with both broad and deep visibility across the entire application delivery chain to eliminate any blind spots that could possibly impact end-user experience. 
• The data center is increasingly complex as technologies such as virtualization and WAN optimization become more prevalent across multiple tiers of application infrastructure. These technologies make it more and more difficult to assess and monitor performance and rapidly isolate root causes when problems occur. Compuware believes the only way to measure performance is in the eyes of the end user, and correlate performance of each of these multiple tiers in the context of the overall end-user experience. Gomez provides analysis and insight into how components such as load balancers, web servers, application servers, Java and .NET components, network infrastructure and database transactions impact overall experience. The Gomez solution will continue to support a wide range of web server, application server, database, network, virtualization and WAN optimization technologies.
• Application performance is a business issue. Application performance has a direct impact on business results. As venture capitalist Fred Wilson recently said, “First and foremost, we believe that speed is more than a feature. Speed is the most important feature. If your application is slow, people won’t use it.”
  
  • A one-second slowdown reduces conversions by 7 percent and user satisfaction by 16 percent. - Aberdeen Group
  • A two-second slowdown reduces revenue per user by 4.3 percent. - Bing
  • Reducing response time from seven to two seconds increased revenue by 7-12 percent and reduced hardware costs by 50 percent. - Shopzilla
  Compuware addresses the APM challenge by enabling organizations to optimize performance and rapidly resolve performance problems for web, non-web, mobile and cloud-based applications.
• Today’s applications need to support a multi-browser, multi-device world. In response to the growing complexity of web and mobile applications and the emergence of multiple browsers and devices with vastly different performance characteristics, Compuware continues to expand our multi-browser and mobile testing solutions. Our Gomez Mobile solution brings new real-user monitoring capabilities, monitoring both mobile browser and native applications on iPads, iPhones, Androids, etc. As mobile devices race to become the most common means for accessing applications over the Internet, we are providing solutions that enable you to assess your readiness beyond performance by identifying aspects that present your customers with a less optimal experience, including errors, content formats, graphics and colors and other mobile standards. 
• You can’t blindly trust the cloud. Organizations are rapidly moving to the cloud to reduce costs, meet peak-load bursting requirements and increase agility. But what level of performance is delivered from the cloud? Do all cloud vendors deliver equal performance across all regions? Gomez performance data shows you can’t blindly trust the cloud. And the cloud is becoming pervasive. Collected Gomez data shows that in February 2011, over 44 percent of web sites had at least one object hosted by Amazon’s EC2 cloud service. Cloud applications are built from assets provided by public, shared third-party service providers, private clouds and data center assets. To monitor the health of these applications, broad visibility across the application delivery chain is critical. In fact, the performance can only be measured from the end user’s perspective, which is essentially the browser and device where the composite application is assembled. The global reach and presence of the Gomez Performance Network provides unprecedented perspective on the performance of shared services under a wide variety of load and usage patterns. This collective intelligence enables us to characterize the performance of ordinarily opaque shared services. Gomez will continue to provide greater visibility into shared services, including capabilities such as contributor groups in the Gomez Portal and public thought-leadership services such as CloudSleuth.
• Load testing 1.0 fails Web 2.0.  The traditional method of simulating and exercising load behind the firewall is insufficient in the new Internet world. Most web applications today are assembled at the browser and include components from across the entire application delivery chain — CDNs, ad providers, ISPs, mobile carriers and even browser behavior will impact how applications perform under load. The unique Gomez approach to testing applications under load in the context of the entire application delivery chain is crucial for anyone serious about understanding how end users will experience your web site under load.

9. What enhancements have been made to the Gomez Portal?

   • Test Search:  To more efficiently navigate the Gomez Portal and take advantage of the power of One Chart (see below), a brand new multi-product search feature is now available. Test Search allows you to find tests across your account and navigate to existing charting and configuration interfaces as well as the newly introduced One Chart. Test Search enables you to enter search criteria and view results grouped by product, folder and test. The underlying search engine returns text matches from test, step names and URLs, as well as folder names. Any Benchmark results that match search criteria are returned as well. In the initial version, Test Search returns all matching Backbone, Last Mile, Mobile and Private Last Mile (formerly called Private Peer) results.
   • One Chart: Gomez  introduces a new version of our multi-product, multi-dimensional charting interface called One Chart. One Chart leverages our new Test Search functionality and allows charting tests from multiple products in a single interface. The interface is designed to plot up to three charts on a single screen. This interface allows the test result set to be filtered against a variety of key test dimensions including geography, ISP, host, contributor group and “First Mile” services. You can filter charts from a single interface with no additional portal navigation. One Chart includes the ability to chart a second axis on each of the three charts, letting you chart up to six metrics in a single view.  One Chart also features new metrics previously unavailable in our charting interfaces, including specific return code/error categories and page composition metrics. You will be able to save these comprehensive views for future use. In this initial version, One Chart allows you to chart Gomez Backbone, Last Mile, Private Peer, Mobile and First Mile results.
     
   • Operations Dashboard: Version 2.0 of the Operations Dashboard brings several key enhancements designed to help you identify and resolve problems fast. This version enables you to configure and save dashboards containing specific tests, regardless of your alert state. You can also set thresholds for these tests that are specific to the saved dashboard in which they appear. A new status indicator has been added to the dashboard to highlight test performance against a custom threshold. This threshold is independent of any existing alert thresholds for a given test and allows you to set tighter or looser limits depending on your needs.
     
   • Internet Health Map: Leveraging the “collective intelligence” of aggregate data from all Gomez customers, the Internet Health Map depicts global Internet performance visualized through a mapping interface. Relative performance is determined by comparing the last hour against the historical typical performance for the current day/hour. This methodology accurately identifies performance anomalies. By using both Gomez Backbone and Last Mile measurements, you can view results across the wide geographical range covered by the Gomez Network. To provide more precise performance assessments, you may select from the following page-level metrics: response time, availability, DNS time, connect time, content time and throughput.
     
   • Updated Node Manager: This provides a new interface to easily track node usage across geographical regions by product.

10. What are the new capabilities of the Gomez Mobile solution?

    • Gomez Real-User Monitoring - Mobile: The industry’s first Mobile RUM solution that measures mobile web site and native application performance from the most critical point of view: your end users. Gomez Mobile RUM measures performance directly from your user’s browser and mobile device, allowing you to evaluate real-user performance by device or browser, geography, network and connection speed, as well as the resultant impact on business metrics such as page views, conversions, abandonment and end-user satisfaction. The solution is similar to our Browser RUM solution (formerly called Actual Experience) that integrates tags into your mobile web sites, iOS or Android-OS based native applications. Gomez Mobile RUM allows you to maximize business results and brand equity by avoiding mobile web site and application performance issues that impact your customers or end users. Additionally, the Gomez one-of-a-kind solution includes mobile-specific indicators such as signal strength.
    • Mobile Readiness Assessment: Check the readiness of your mobile application and identify optimization opportunities. Gomez Cross-Browser Testing automatically assesses your application and rates the accessibility of your web site from mobile devices. The score is calculated by testing your web site’s accessibility across a number of categories such as mobile web standards, device limitations, graphics and colors, HTTP errors, etc.  Gomez Mobile Readiness returns your score with an itemized list of issues and priorities, so you can prioritize problems that may have surfaced. The variety of mobile devices and tablets are proliferating—iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, etc. There are many blind spots in this dimension of the web application delivery chain — how do you know you are really prepared for the variety of devices, screen sizes, mobile operating systems, etc? Gomez Mobile Readiness is the only comprehensive assessment of mobile readiness available to help you eliminate mobile blind spots.
      
    • Gomez Synthetic Monitoring - Mobile (formerly call Active Mobile): A single Gomez Recorder now supports all your script recording needs, including mobile native applications. Mobile recording capabilities have been completely integrated into the Gomez Recorder. Compuware continues to expand its mobile network. New nodes are now available internationally in Australia, Hong Kong and Toronto as well as three new U.S. nodes in New York, New York; Ashburn, Virginia; and Santa Clara, California.

11. How does Real-User Monitoring – Mobile work?

    Gomez provides a set of tags for mobile web sites, iOS (iPhone, iPad etc.) and Android operating-system-based devices for the monitoring of real-user experiences in the field. These tags are designed specifically for mobile use—providing maximum insight with no noticeable impact to local performance. With your mobile web sites and native applications instrumented with tags, you will gain insight into application delivery chain performance, including the back-end, client-side processing performance and end-user visible events (such as screen transition). The real end-user performance results are available in Gomez RUM reports on the Gomez Portal. Further, mobile-specific indicators are available to contrast the performance results with environmental parameters such as signal strength.

12. What enhancements have been made to the Gomez Recorder?

    • Integration with Google Page Speed: Google Page Speed provides a comprehensive assessment of page performance based on years of experience and best practices. When you play back a script in the Gomez Recorder on Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) or Firefox, Google Page Speed results are integrated into the playback results. Google Page Speed runs a series of diagnostics and analyzes a page's performance based on a set of specific rules. These rules examine items such as resource caching, data upload and download size, client-server round-trip times, web server configuration, JavaScript and CSS code, image file properties, etc. For each rule, Google Page Speed uses a color-coded key to indicate priority– red, yellow or green – and suggests specific actions for addressing each rule. 

      
    • Enhanced Flash Support: Leverage the Gomez Recorder to specify Flash interactions and playback on the Firefox agent, both in the Gomez Recorder and the Firefox agents deployed throughout the Gomez network.
    • Additional Enhancements: The Gomez Recorder also includes the ability to better control the end of a step (on DOM ready or when the load event fires) and the ability to see request and response headers in the playback results. The new Gomez Recorder is available for download on the Gomez Portal.

13. What enhancements have been made to the Gomez Multi-Browser Agent Family? 

    IE8 Upgrade: In the Spring Release, Gomez will launch the GA version of the IE8 agent. The Gomez Backbone Network will be upgraded in a phased approach starting in June 2011. Details of this transition will be made available via Service Notifications.

14. What are the key enhancements in the release of the Gomez APM on-premises Platform?

    • Gomez Business Service Manager (formerly called Vantage Service Manager): New out-of-the-box, third-party integration with Nagios and Microsoft SCOM extends the open Gomez framework to leverage application-enabling infrastructure data for greater depth and breadth in managing application performance.
    • Gomez Real-User Monitoring – Data Center (formerly called Vantage Real-User Monitoring): Upgrades to data collection and analysis capabilities enrich new dashboards and reports. These enhancements include user-centric web application business performance metrics to help you analyze the relationship between performance and end-user behavior; multi-level hierarchical relationship mapping for SAP business transactions to provide problem identification from the context of end user tasks to technical operations; visibility into SQL database business transaction performance across all queries to provide the most complete fault domain isolation for multi-tier applications; and flexibility for customized performance metrics based on user-defined calculations.
    • Gomez Java and .NET Monitoring (formerly called Vantage for Java and .NET Monitoring): Improvements to link  web applications and transactions. This provides seamless troubleshooting from the end users’ perspective to the underlying Java or .NET code.

15. What new capabilities have been added to Gomez Real-User Monitoring – First Mile (formerly called Gomez First Mile)?

    • Additional “First Mile” Diagnostic Metrics: To improve web site performance analysis,  Gomez RUM First Mile offers new metrics in the measurement details. For better root-cause analysis and IT operational support, Gomez First Mile now includes metrics such as errors, connect time, SSL time and aggregate web-site performance.
    • Additional “First Mile” Business Analysis: Gomez RUM First Mile now delivers abandonment rate information, correlating performance to business impact. This enables performance improvement efforts to be directed where the business will benefit the most.
    • Self-service Configuration: Gomez RUM First Mile adds the ability to use wildcards in the configuration to support web sites that have dynamic content in your URLs. In addition, more granular thresholds can be set at the test/page level to better report on “good vs. bad” Performance.
    • New One Chart: Gomez RUM First Mile is fully integrated into the new One Chart which provides an updated multi-product, multi-dimensional charting interface. Gomez First Mile status report displays key performance indicators for tests, pages, hosts and servers. From the status report, a user can launch into One Chart for further analysis of ongoing performance problems.
    • Gomez First Mile Appliance: Now serves as a data source for on-premises RUM - Data Center (formerly called Vantage Agentless) installations. It serves as a quick and easy starting point for new RUM - Data Center customers to take full advantage of the additional capabilities it provides. (Learn more about the integration between Gomez and Vantage below.)

16. What new features have been added to Gomez Web Load Testing (formerly called Reality Load)?

    • New High-Volume Load Agent: In addition to the current solutions for creating real browser and mobile device/browser load, Gomez Load Testing now offers a highly scalable HTTP load agent. With scripts generated from the Gomez Recorder, the new agent enables self-service load testing up to millions of page views per hour. The new agent can run in conjunction with real browsers from the Gomez Last Mile for unprecedented accuracy in user-experience measurement combined with the highest volumes of cloud load generation.
      
    • More Cloud and “Last Mile” Load Generation Locations: To drive increased load and offer more geographic variability for a load test, the Gomez Web Load Testing network has expanded. Additional base load and “Last Mile” capacity is available in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific.
    • Additional Charting and UI Enhancements: The Gomez Web Load Testing Spring Release provides additional page-level diagnostics and easier navigation through test data to quickly pinpoint issues. 

17. What enhancements have been made to Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Streaming (formerly called Gomez Active Streaming XF)?

    • Support for Silverlight: Gomez continues to extend our Streaming solution to support additional streaming technologies. Silverlight support includes:
      i.   Containers: .mp4, .wmv, .mp3, .wma, .asx, .wma, .m4v
      ii.   Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS
      iii.   Codecs: H.263, H.264, On2 VP6, MP3, WMV 2/3.
    • Authenticated Streams: Leveraging the Gomez Recorder, you can record an authentication transaction and associate this transaction with a streaming test. This transaction automatically runs to establish a session that the streaming agent uses to connect to a nonpublic stream.
    • Support for Adaptive Streaming: This includes both Flash dynamic streaming (over HTTP or RTMP) and Silverlight smooth streaming over HTTP.
    
    

18. What new enhancements have been added to Gomez Synthetic Monitoring – Last Mile?

    • Additions to Instant Test: Dig, Traceroute and Ping have been added to provide improved diagnostics.
    • Improved PEER Diagnostic Data Collection: Gomez Last Mile collects more diagnostic data during test run, including request/response header capture and DNS servers. You choose to turn on the feature for any given test; it’s not included in every single measurement automatically..
    • Last Mile Benchmarks: The Gomez Spring Release provisions Benchmarks to customer accounts now for both Backbone and Last Mile. This means you can now leverage Gomez Last Mile Benchmarks directly within your Gomez account.


19. What integration is available between Gomez SaaS and Gomez on-premises (formerly known as Vantage)?

    • Customers using Gomez SaaS with or without the Gomez First Mile appliance can integrate Gomez on-premises solutions with the new Operations Dashboard. Gomez on-premises solutions provides unique capabilities behind the firewall to provide customers with deep performance analysis for business-critical applications. Most notably, there are two key areas:
      i.   Multi-tier analysis which leverages Real-User Monitoring - Data Center to measure the response time at each tier of an application including the application server, database, MQ and SQL.
      ii.   Java and .NET method analysis lets you pinpoint an application performance issue to the specific Java or .NET method.
    • When combined with Gomez SaaS, Gomez on-premise enables customers to quickly pinpoint the root cause of a data center issue, using the broad visibility of the Gomez Operations Dashboard as the starting point.
    • For Gomez Real-User Monitoring - First Mile customers, the appliance will now serve as a data source for on-premises Data Center RUM installations.  It serves as a quick and easy starting point for new Data Center RUM customers to take advantage of multi-tier analysis, Java and .NET analysis, etc.

20. Where can I get more information?

    There are several options for getting more information:
    
    • Watch the recorded “What’s new” customer webinar.
    • Visit http://www.compuware.com/APM and check out the new product and solutions pages.
    • Call your account manager.