If the only thing to fear is fear itself, then VCs need to snap out of it because they are cowering in their wine cellars. If you haven't already seen it, a slide show called "R.I.P. Good Times" presented this past fall by Sequoia Capital to CEOs of its portfolio companies shows just how morose the mood among VCs has become. Read more
Welcome to the toughest "do more with less" year in memory. Chances are your boss will expect improved application performance while axing your group's budget. And you're probably on edge about keeping your job. Here are 5 steps to improve performance so you can keep your job--and who knows--maybe even buck the trend and get a raise.
1. Do Less Read more
This is the second time we have taken The Wall Street Journal to task for misunderstanding net neutrality issues. In a front page article today The Wall Street Journal reprimands Google for approaching major ISPs with a proposal that the newspaper says puts net neutrality at risk. According to The Journal, Google would co-locate its own caching servers within ISPs' networks. Read more
"One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop," a man named G. Weilacher once said. According to our research on the effectiveness of IT performance management best practices, Mr. Weilacher is spot on by concluding that a modest collection of tools can get a job done well. We have documented our findings in a free report that you can download here.
In the case of performance management, tools from four vendors are sufficient to get the job done as efficiently as possible. Read more
The third annual Apdex Alliance symposium was held this week in conjunction with the CMG (Computer Measurement Group) international conference in Las Vegas. There were twice as many attendees as last year, which is an accomplishment in today's economy. The event was a great opportunity for users, vendors, and Apdex practitioners to learn from each other. The most compelling sessions were case studies presenting ten very different examples of how Apdex is being applied. The Apdex report examples showed a lot of innovation in easy-to-understand visualization. Read more
Getting more for less during these tough economic times is a must--and after a recent conversation with New Edge Networks we think that their MPLS over DSL service is a good way for small to medium-sized businesses to do just that. New Edge says they can provide this service to 90 percent of US businesses--so if you have between 5 and 40 sites and an appetite for T1s without the budget to match, you may want to check it out. Read more
Pushing the application performance management service envelope for the SMB crowd, TMC Communications recently launched a new application performance monitoring and bandwidth management service. Sporting the grandiose name ‘Titan', the new service is designed to meet the needs of small-to-medium sized businesses with little or no in-house network or application performance monitoring expertise. Read more
For the last six weeks we've been interviewing US carriers to determine whether application performance management services have come of age in the US as they have in Europe. By application performance management we mean services that provide visibility into application performance, as well as services that control and/or accelerate application performance. Our verdict is that the US is experiencing a groundswell of new application performance management services, and we predict that groundswell will grow into a wave in the next year or so. Read more
This month Zyrion launched the Traverse Platform that provides a simple view of how well your various businesses are operating on the IT infrastructure. Their approach was a good idea back in early 2003 when we first met with the founders of Fidelia. Since then they were acquired by Network General which was then swallowed by NetScout but recently spun out as a shiny new Zyrion. Read more
BMC's ProactiveNet Analytics product is the subject of this week's application performance management solution profile and user feedback forum. Acquired in 2007 to round out BMC's business service management solution set, BMC ProactiveNet now nests within the BMC service assurance solution family. Read more
The third annual Apdex Symposium will be held December 9th in conjunctions with the CMG conference in Las Vegas. The program will include results of a user survey. You can provide input to the Apdex cause by filling out the survey which will enter you into a drawing for an Apple iPod Touch along with three chances to win a $100 Amazon gift certificate. Read more
This week it's Fluke Network's Visual Performance Manager (as well as Visual Uptime) users' turn to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences. Under the banner "Network SuperVision" Fluke Networks has expanded from pure-play network infrastructure monitoring into data and voice application performance management over the past two years. Read more
Apdex is dead simple. It is a standard way to convert many response time measurements into a single numerical value that always stays within the range of 0 to 1 where 0 is a disaster and 1 is perfect performance delivery. Dozens of vendors measure response time, so you would think you could readily get an Apdex report. Alas it is not so. Read more
Microsoft CIFS and MAPI-based applications are lousy network citizens, so if you are about to move your Microsoft servers away from users, you should take pre-emptive measures—or buy extra life insurance to ensure your family will be provided for in case of a user mutiny. In a previous post we described the problem. Read more
Modern life is about speed—rushing to keep up. Your business application had better run fast, faster, fastest. Conventional wisdom dictates that application response time must always be faster. Whatever speed your users experience today, it had better be half that next year. Stop! Think about the consequences. Read more
When those of us from the network side of the universe think of HP management tools, HP OpenView generally pops to mind. For those of you not in the know, HP OpenView was recently rechristened HP Software. Read more
At a Gomez users' meeting held after last week's Web Experience Forum, users provided great commentary about how they use Gomez services to ensure good performance-including how they are using Apdex. Imad Mouline, Gomez' CTO, described where all of the Gomez application performance measurement services fit into an application management maturity scale of availability, response time, and consistency (good performance for all users all the time). The Gomez Business Pulse XF portal integrates the views and lev Read more
This week we ask CA's Wily Technology Division customers to share their in-the-trenches experiences with the CA Wily Customer Experience Manager (CEM) and Introscope performance management tools. As one of the "big four" management vendors, CA expanded its far-reaching IT toolkit into application performance management in 2006 when it acquired Wily Technology for its Introscope software. Today CA Wily claims to manage more web applications for more customers than any other tool vendor. Read more
For the first time ever, a conference has web designers, business line managers and IT professionals rubbing shoulders in the same venue. It’s about time. The venue was the inaugural Web Experience Forum in Boston this week. Read more
In this week’s application performance management series we solicit feedback from Compuware customers about their experiences with the Vantage product lineup. Through aggressive acquisition, Compuware has assembled the requisite components to position itself against the “big four” management vendors—IBM, CA, BMC, and HP. Read more
NetForecast is an internationally recognized engineering consulting company that benchmarks, analyzes, and improves the performance of networked data, voice, and video applications.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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