End User Experience Management

End-User Experience Management

When evaluating prospective IT investments more and more companies are focusing on the end-user "IT quality", i.e. the IT functionality but also the IT availability and performance. Traditional parameters such as server load/utilisation or network availability are more and more pushed to the background. For the end-user it is only the performance at his desktop that counts. This is called end-user experience (EUE). New measuring techniques can measure EUE today – even for large numbers of end-users and distributed environments respectively Internet users (e-commerce, field workers, remote locations …). These techniques provide an important contribution to business/service level management (BSM/SLM).

With a comprehensive solutions and service portfolio amasol will support you in planning and executing your own EUE initiative as well as selecting the appropriate measuring techniques. In addition, we will support you in implementing, operating and managing the corresponding solutions.

Triggers

The main trigger fort the increasing interest in "End User Experience" is an increasing top-down pressure. The reasons are clear. EUE projects are highly visible throughout the company – even up to board level. There will be data monitored on the availability and performance of business-critical applications that may be understood by non-IT experts as well. This puts the IT department on the spot that no longer can hide behind easy to track availability information of single IT components (servers, databases, network infrastructure). Instead it is forced to take the responsibility for the result at the end-user's desktop.
Thus, it is no wonder, that more and more EUE projects are not triggered by the IT but by the business departments. The sales director simply wants to make sure that the sales application or the Internet portal will be provided with a reasonable quality.

Future Market Development

Market analysts forecast a significant market growth for end user experience as well as SLM/BSM solutions. This growth will be fuelled by the fact that many enterprises have reached the second level of IT maturity (reactive) in the five-level IT maturity model (see following chart) and now are working on evolving their IT towards level 3 (pro-active) and level 4 (service-oriented).

 EUE Measuring Techniques – Overview

The following summary provides an overview on the major EUE measuring methods as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Technique 1: Active Robots

With the so called robotic/synthetic testing typical end-user transactions are recorded with a script recorder. Then these transactions are repeated 24x7 from robot desktops (capture relay). It is a critical success factor for the project that the correct "most used" transactions are selected because complex, but rarely used transactions will drastically increase the effort but only add little value to the EUE performance evaluation.
The main benefit of this most common technique with various solutions available on the market is the permanent availability of data from selected reference points. In addition, the transactions are clearly defined and repeatable providing precise KPI data for SLM/BSM. 
The main disadvantage of this technique is the effort necessary for the extensive design and maintenance of the scripts. In addition, it is not possible to make an impact statement, i.e. retrieve the information how many users will be affected by the performance alerts. Besides, the synthetic testing will put an additional burden on the IT infrastructure.
As "active robot" solutions we at amasol are using CA eHealth and Compuware Client Vantage. 

Technique 2: Passive Client Agents

With this technique the end user experience will be measured by software agents installed on the desktop PC or – when thin clients are used – on the terminal server. With this technique very precise measuring data will be gained. However, especially in the German-language market passive client agents are not very wide-spread, as the technique has to fight a "big brother is watching you" image. In addition, the effort for distributing the software clients should not be underestimated.
For passive client agents we are relying once again on the performance and flexibility of CA eHealth and Compuware Client Vantage.

Technique 3: Passive IP Flow Analysis

This technique tracks the performance by transaction via passive monitoring of the network traffic with probes/appliances at a central position, e.g. at the data center gateway.
The benefits are an explicit performance statement for every end user transaction resulting in a simple impact statement. Implementation is easy, maintenance efforts are low. Neither agents nor changes to the IT infrastructure are required. For this reason, this technique may also be used for users outside the corporate IT environment, e.g. business partners or Internet users.
Unfortunately, the use of this technique is limited to IP-based applications. Transactions normally are identified for web-based applications (HTTP(S) only. For other client protocols only network-related performance/availability statements are possible.
For passive IP flow analysis we are using Compuware Client Vantage Agentless  and CA Wily CEM.

Best Practice: Combination of Techniques
As the short summary on the various techniques shows there is no "best" technique. The challenge is to integrate the techniques to a solution mix which is perfectly tailored for the corporate requirements. When selecting a vendor you should choose one who can cope with all techniques to avoid costly integration efforts for the different solutions.

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