Why is it so challenging to ensure high performance for web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications?
Seven major trends are influencing application performance today.
1. The Application Delivery Chain: Performance Is in the Eyes of Your End Users
Your applications are delivered to your customers and users through a complex set of software and services called "the application delivery chain." This chain is more complex today because of the use of cloud providers and increased complexity in the data center and the Internet. Problems occur anywhere along the chain, causing performance issues for users and customers. You need to monitor and test your applications across the entire application delivery chain, starting with the perspective of your end users and customers. Learn more about the application delivery chain and watch the two-minute explainer video (below).
2. Your Data Center Is More Complex Than Ever
Data centers and corporate WANs are more complex than ever — and the complexity just keeps increasing. Most organizations have some combination of multi-tier architectures, a mixed physical and virtual environment, mobile components, web services, WAN optimization, virtualized desktops and more. Monitoring just your database, servers and networks isn’t good enough anymore, but no one wants to put agents and devices everywhere. Read how to optimize application performance in the midst of today’s data center complexity or watch the video below.
3. It's a Mobile, Multi-browser World
There’s an explosion of browsers and mobile devices — and they all operate differently. This creates major challenges for application performance because many of the interactions in today’s web and mobile apps are executed in the browser or in the device, where differences can cause major issues. Gomez performance data shows dramatic differences in response times between browsers and mobile devices. With such a wide range, it’s vital to optimize performance for all the browser and mobile devices that your customers and users use. Read more about the mobile, multi-browser world and watch the video below.
4. Application Performance Is a Business Issue
Your application performance has a big impact on your revenue, brand image, customer satisfaction and employee productivity. As you rely more and more on the web for branding, driving revenue, creating leads or remotely connecting your employees, you must ensure high performance. Read more about how organizations improve web performance because it improves their businesses, and studies prove it. Also, watch the video below.
5. Load Testing 1.0 Fails Web 2.0
Yesterday’s load testing technology won’t cut it today. Today’s web applications are assembled at the browser, including third-party content, cloud-delivered elements, RIA controls, CDN-accelerated content, etc. Load testing solutions that were created years ago for client-server applications only test inside the firewall and miss most of what happens along the web application delivery chain. Cloud-based solutions don’t properly measure what happens from the end-user perspective. To properly load test today’s web applications, you need a new style of load testing, called Load Testing 2.0, that generates high-volume load from the cloud and real-world load from actual desktops. Read more about load testing to improve web performance or watch the load testing video below.
6. Don’t Blindly Trust the Cloud
If you move some or all of your applications to the cloud, how will you ensure performance? Traditional data center monitoring approaches won’t work: The cloud is opaque, so you can’t monitor what’s going on “inside” the cloud. Can you blindly trust that everything is working OK? Can you accept that risk? The answer is to test and monitor your applications from the outside in — from the perspective of your customers and end users. Read more about application performance issues in the cloud, or watch the video below.
7. Unify Your Application Performance Life Cycle
How much time do you spend reproducing production performance issues so you can diagnose problems? Are your Development, QA and Operations teams speaking the same language? Today’s agile organizations break down the walls between Development, QA and Operations by giving them a common set of tools, metrics and diagnostics. They can quickly identify and resolve performance issues in development or production, and share the same files and data without any misunderstanding or wasted time. This unifies the application performance life cycle and creates a closer connection to the business to ensure application performance is a competitive advantage. Read more about how to unify your application performance life cycle.
