There are a lot of terms floating around to describe how to set up metrics for evaluating service performance over the network. No doubt the most established is Quality of Service, or QoS, which has generally taken on a fairly technical, bandwidth-centric definition where it remains still valuable as a metric, but is far from summing up what really counts in the eyes of the end user. There are other terms like RUM or “real user monitoring” that are technical, but at least focusing on a series of monitoring technologies truly targeted at the “real user” or “end user.” And then there’s QoE, or Quality of Experience, which is my personal favorite because it is not centered in technology, but in the flesh-and-blood experience of the user consuming your services.

This focus is a lot like Mean Opinion Score (MOS) was originally as it applied to telecommunications services. Like it or not, how your customers “feel” about your services is in the end going to be how they’re going to vote with their pocketbook or their budget approvals.

This isn’t to say that technical metrics don’t count. You absolutely need them. Building towards QoE with a good combination of technical metrics and a healthy dose of customer dialog is a fine art. In this column we’re going to look briefly at some of the metrics and technologies that most often apply. But before we do, I suppose I should answer the overwhelmingly obvious question from many network managers: “Why me? Why should I care about QoE? Isn’t that the job of the applications manager or the Help Desk?”

The answer is that you’re partly right. QoE isn’t your job alone. But the network is the delivery system for almost all application services, like it or not, including VoIP and unified communications, but most predominantly focusing on Web-based applications. Many of these depend heavily on network-centric monitoring tools to ensure their performance.

EMA data shows that Web-based applications for internal use, followed by client-server applications, then Web-based applications for external use and Web services, dominate what’s actually being deployed over the network, all well ahead of VoIP. And EMA research also reinforces the importance of the network in the delivery of application and business services - a healthy 72% of respondents from a wide range of enterprises and service providers had more than 20 remote branch offices. In a parallel EMA survey, 34.1% had more than 100 remote locations. Networked applications are enabling new business models across verticals – true today with Web 2.0, and even truer tomorrow with the advent of globally dispersed service-oriented architectures.