Why is application performance measurement necessary but not sufficient? Because if the measurement informs, it does not allow to interpret nor to anticipate. However, the purpose of an information system is ultimately to promote development by making the right decisions at the right time.

Imagine your trucks stuck in the garage because their departure is not validated. Imagine your chain of stores with hundreds of outlets each losing 10 seconds per receipt. Imagine that your Australian employees are struggling to receive the data needed to advance production because your application infrastructure (ERP, CRM, etc.) is based in Europe. Companies depend on so-called critical applications. Decreased performance or unavailability puts them in a vulnerable position.

Examples of application performance analysis

Luxury Industry

Let’s start with a simple example related to the luxury industry. The performance of an e-commerce site as well as a physical store requires the proper functioning of many applications: from the management of sales in stores to the back office that manages the supply of raw materials through the electronic payment system. Let’s imagine that following a good communication campaign, your stores experience a peak in activity. This can overload the electronic payment platform. A good information system makes it possible to factualize the network defect and to justify the necessary investments.

Let’s take the example of an e-commerce site. If the mature consumer is unable to activate the payment of his cart, his confidence will be tainted (as well as his patience) and he will buy his product elsewhere. Here, the analysis of the application performance allows to understand a momentary decrease of the turnover. The consumer simply could not pay!

The analysis of the application performance gives confidence and foresight: clear identification of weak points, useful investment areas.

 

Energy industry

Let’s continue with the energy industry. The plurality of international sites implies a large volume of data to be processed and numerous fluctuations linked to the network, many material and immaterial exchanges, thus an infinite number of operations linked to the Information System. How can we ensure that everything works well on a global scale when there are networks of radically different quality in different geographical areas?

Take a multinational with, for example, a site in Tanzania, one in Johannesburg and one in New York. How to evaluate application performance?

It is important to couple two types of measurements:

• – a network delay measurement (timing of the routing of a data packet to a data center in milliseconds),
• – an application measurement (execution of an application script, which makes it possible to evaluate the user experience).

First, we test the network performance (in milliseconds). Then, we refine the analysis by measuring the business applications (in seconds or minutes) on emblematic sites, using test boxes that play user scenarios. Of course, the implementation of these robots can represent a cost, but this is precisely where application performance analysis plays its full role. A lower cost for a maximum of results. To be more precise, how to evaluate the user experience on 3 sites with 2 robots?

Application performance analysis: the art of deduction

1. Two emblematic sites are chosen: Johannesburg and New York.

2. We measure the network quality: 200 milliseconds in Johannesburg, 50 milliseconds in New York.

3. We run the job script: 2mn in Johannesburg, 1mn in New York

4. In Tanzania, we only measure the quality of the network: 180 milliseconds (remember that it is 200 milliseconds in Johannesburg!)

5. We can therefore deduce that in Tanzania, the collaborator executes the application scenario in (approximately) 2 minutes.

Relying on a high-performance application base guarantees the chances of long-term success (better sales, better information system between subsidiaries). Investing in a good analysis of the application performance is to have a decision support tool and therefore a development tool. This is the added value of the managed service offered by Maltem Insight Performance.