Table of Contents. Introduction... 3 Monitoring Real End User Experience... 3 What is Frontline Performance Intelligence?... 3

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2 Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Monitoring Real End User Experience... 3 What is Frontline Performance Intelligence?... 3 Executive Summary View of Frontline User Experience... 5 Preemptive Problem Detection... 6 Real-Time, End-to-End Quality of Service Analysis... 7 Helpdesk Optimization... 8 Right-Time Decision Support... 9 Desktop Virtualization Planning & Management ITIL Implementation & Operation About Aternity P a g e

3 Introduction MONITORING REAL END USER EXPERIENCE To effectively monitor real End User Experience, the three primary components that dynamically interact, define, and constantly impact how End Users experience the IT Services they consume, need to be measured in real-time. Real and Virtual Desktop Performance Boot time, running processes, process latency, CPU and memory utilization, non-responding processes, error messages, crashed applications, etc. Application Performance Latency, response time and end-to-end transaction time for any business process independent of the underlying application and desktop technology, including HTTP(s), AJAX, Client/Server, Java,.NET, XenApp/ICA, Terminal Server/RDP, VDI, etc. End User Productivity Application, module and function usage and usability statistics, application usage trail, correlative nature of application usage, number of business processes performed and time taken, e.g. trades completed, calls closed, s sent, invoices created, etc. WHAT IS FRONTLINE PERFORMANCE INTELLIGENCE? Frontline Performance Intelligence is the result of the real-time aggregation, analysis, and correlation of all performance metrics that define and impact real end user experience. Frontline Performance Intelligence is enabled by self-learning, statistical modeling of dynamic performance baselines, preemptive problem detection, dynamic isolation of impacted users, and automatic identification of business impact and probable cause analysis. With Frontline Performance Intelligence, enterprises rapidly gain the agility required to address end user issues before they impact business results. 3 P a g e

4 Executive Summary FRONTLINE PERFORMANCE INTELLIGENCE USE CASES & BUSINESS BENEFITS The End User Experience and Application Performance Management market is rapidly evolving as F1000 companies are forced to deal with the impact of poor user experience on business performance. A recent Aberdeen Group survey of more than 200 senior IT and Line of Business executives revealed that more than 50 percent of an organization s revenue loss is attributed to poor application performance. In addition, the enterprises surveyed ranked the ability to proactively identify end user problems as the top priority for any Application Performance initiative. Aternity s award-winning Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI) Platform delivers a next-generation approach to End User Experience management by effectively transforming every desktop, real or virtual, into a self monitoring platform that is user experience aware. Aternity s FPI platform uniquely aggregates, analyses and correlates all metrics associated with the three components (Application, Desktop and User Performance) that define and impact end user experience. Below are examples of how today s Global 1000 companies are leveraging Aternity s Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform to drive strategic IT and business initiatives: 360 View of Frontline User Experience: Dramatically reduces business disruption and increases user productivity by arming IT and Business executives with the empirical evidence of how frontline users experience the IT services they consume. Preemptive Problem Detection: Transforms reactive organizations into proactive IT enterprises by automatically identifying effected applications, isolating impacted users and resolving probable cause before users call the help desk. Real-time, End-to-end Quality of Service Analysis: Enables continuous improvement of application usage and usability by automatically analyzing and correlating application, network, desktop and user productivity performance metrics. Helpdesk Optimization: Proactively arms Helpdesk personnel with precise insight into user activities and their associated performance metrics, application, network & desktoprelated problems and their probable cause, and hardware & software configuration changes. Right-time Decision Support: Empowers IT and Business execs, along with application support and software developers, with the frontline intelligence required to drive key business and IT initiatives, such as informed capacity planning, software license optimization, new application feature development, work-from-home programs, green initiatives, etc. Desktop Virtualization Planning & Management: Eliminates the uncertainty associated with planning, evaluating, managing and orchestrating service levels for Desktop virtualization initiatives involving Server-based Computing (Citrix and MS Terminal Server), VDI and Application Virtualization. ITIL Implementation & Operation: Supports process-driven IT organizations helping them achieve significant efficiency improvements and cost savings through Problem and Incident Management, Service Level Management, Capacity Management, Change Management and Software Asset Management. 4 P a g e

5 360 View of Frontline User Experience The only way to improve business performance at the frontline is to measure actual end user experiences. Aternity delivers the industry s first Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI) platform, arming senior IT and Line of Business (LOB) management with comprehensive and precise visibility into actual frontline users' experiences across entire organizations and enterprises. Frontline performance intelligence not only monitors the status and health of end user workstations and business critical applications but also gives IT and business stakeholders an understanding of the productivity of users on the frontline. Aternity arms IT and Business executives with the empirical evidence of how frontline users experience the IT services they consume, dramatically reducing business disruption and increasing user productivity. Aternity s platform delivers powerful comparative performance analysis charts & reports that powerfully visualize how frontline users with different configurations and/or working in multiple locations, experience the same applications whether in a real or virtualized environment. Below are some examples of Aternity s 360 degree view of frontline user experience: Boot time-based comparisons for different machine types Configuration-based performance comparisons for any business process, e.g. 256MB vs. 1GB workstations, 1GHz CPU vs. 2.6GHz CPU Location-based performance comparisons for any business process, e.g. London vs. New York vs. India, Office Users vs. Home (VPN) Users Department- and role-based performance comparisons for any business process Performance comparisons for specific business processes based on different applications running in the background Real vs. virtualized desktop-based performance comparisons, e.g. Direct Access vs. Citrix/Terminal Server/VDI VDI-based desktops in high-density servers vs. low-density servers and physical desktops Time-based performance comparisons, e.g. Monday 9:00am vs. Friday 4:00pm Peer-based comparisons Back-end Server-based comparisons Before and after performance comparisons, e.g. before and after infrastructure changes (both desktop and data center) 5 P a g e

6 Preemptive Problem Detection More often than not, IT s first and only indication of a problem at the frontline is when end users call the help desk if they call at all and by this time business has already been disrupted. Moreover, when users start calling it is difficult for them to accurately describe the performance problems they are experiencing. In addition, IT can t ascertain whether problems are isolated or endemic or determine the unique end-to-end commonalities across the affected groups. The Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform transforms reactive organizations into proactive IT enterprises. With Aternity, IT recognizes performance issues long before frontline users do, and determines the extent and impact of the problem. This dramatically reduces the duration of business disruptions and the resulting costs of resolving these service level issues. Below are some of some Aternity s preemptive problem detection capabilities that help transform organizations into Proactive IT Enterprises: Automatic detection of application ( Pop-up ) errors Automatic detection of non-responding processes Automatic detection of crashed applications Automatic detection of process latency problems caused by server-side processes, e.g. Outlook global address book lookup Automatic detection of end-to-end business process performance problems, e.g. send mail, create customer, fulfill order, execute trade Automatic generation of performance baselines for each business activity frontline users perform by location, configuration, department, time of day, day of week, week of month and moth of year Preemptive problem detection when performance, for any activity, deviates from the baseline Dynamic grouping of like symptoms into a single problem Automatic identification of when a problem started, which applications and which activities within each application are affected Dynamic isolation of users impacted by performance problems Immediate quantification of the digital pain and business impact of performance problems Probable cause analysis, via both positive and negative correlation of unique commonalities of the impacted users, using all monitored attributes, i.e. desktop, network and application Trouble ticketing system integration Full Problem Life Cycle Management (PLCM) enabling automatic identification of when a problem was fixed, to validate appropriate problem ticket closure 6 P a g e

7 Real-Time, End-to-End Quality of Service Analysis With Aternity, enterprises gain the in-depth frontline intelligence they need to understand application usage and usability, quality of service, and user behavior and productivity. Aternity enables continuous improvement of application usage and usability by automatically analyzing and correlating application, network, desktop and user productivity performance metrics. Below are some of the capabilities that Aternity provides to enable organizations to achieve continuous improvements in their application usage, quality of service and resulting end user productivity: Correlate application activities and desktop performance metrics, e.g. CPU, Memory, Swap File, etc. Correlate offending applications and desktop performance metrics, i.e. identify applications that are CPU and Memory Hogs Determine quality of application service by number of errors generated and user productivity impact Determine quality of application service by performance and user productivity impact Identify number of application users (for each specific application) by location / department, etc. Identify application function / module usage within each application by location / department, etc. Identify time spent by users in each function / module Identify number of activities performed within each application, e.g. number of sent or received, by location, configurations, backend server, etc. Understand application function / activity click-through, i.e. usage trail Understand usage correlation between different applications (e.g., Instant Messaging vs. Outlook) Set, maintain and troubleshoot end point configuration according to multiple gold standards, including driver versions, applications, software configuration and hardware configuration Compare user activity with pre-scripted guidelines, e.g: call center scripts, find non-conforming users rapidly to re-engage in training 7 P a g e

8 Helpdesk Optimization Helpdesk personnel are faced with a myriad of partial, anecdotal, subjective and often misleading information. With Aternity s Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform, helpdesk personnel gain precise insight into actual user activities, application and desktop-related problems, configuration changes, and usage patterns and experiences of similarly grouped users. Below are some of Aternity s capabilities that arms Helpdesk personnel with precise insight into user end user experience facilitating effective and timely triage: Real time availability of the following critical information: o When the problem started? o What applications are affected? o What business processes of the different applications are affected? o How many users are impacted, i.e. what is the business impact of the problem? o Which users are impacted, i.e. who are the highest priority users that need to be helped o What is the magnitude of digital pain the users are experiencing? o What s the performance of peers? o What is the probable cause of the problem? Drill down capabilities providing the following invaluable information: o Hardware configuration o Software configurations o Running Processes o Last 10 transactions performed and their performance metrics, i.e. latency, throughput, response time, end-to-end transaction time o Desktop performance metrics at the time of the above transactions, i.e. CPU, Memory, Swap File, etc. o Pop-up Error Messages, Non-responding processes and Crashed Applications that occurred at the time of the problem Verification whether the calling user(s) are affected by other problems that the system detected Verification when a problem is fixed before closing a ticket and following up with a user 8 P a g e

9 Right-Time Decision Support With Aternity s Right-Time Decision Support and Analytics capabilities, IT and business execs, along with support and developers, are ALL armed with empirical evidence linking frontline performance with key business and IT initiatives. Aternity s platform analyzes, aggregates, correlates, and transforms desktop, application, and frontline user performance data into actionable business intelligence. This enables business and IT to make informed and verifiable business decisions, while also empowering them to optimally prioritize and execute upon high-impact initiatives. Below are some the core capabilities that Aternity provides organizations seeking to take advantage of real-time, right-time decision support: Accurately determine which data center/infrastructure capacity improvements actually enhance frontline performance Accurately determine which desktop capacity improvements actually enhance frontline performance for which applications Accurately determine what application enhancements are most closely correlated to increased activity Accurately identify which users are using which applications/modules/functions, and how often, to optimize software licensing Understand energy efficiency of different workstations to help drive Green initiatives Use differentiated classes of service in user-understood Service-Level Objectives, such as end-to-end execution time, to effectively monitor performance and productivity Accurately determine which applications are suited for server-based virtualization, comparing user experience between direct and indirect access Accurately determine which applications are suited for host-based virtualized environments Accurately determine which applications are suited for streaming application environments 9 P a g e

10 Desktop Virtualization Planning & Management Aternity s Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform eliminates the uncertainty associated with planning, evaluating, managing and orchestrating service levels for Desktop virtualization initiatives involving Server-based Computing (Citrix and MS Terminal Server), VDI and Application Virtualization. Aternity arms IT and Line of Business (LOB) management with the empirical data required to make strategic desktop virtualization and consolidation decisions based on actual End User Experience. Below are some of the capabilities Aternity provides organizations seeking to evaluate, plan, manage and orchestrate virtualized desktop environments: Comprehensive application performance monitoring for Web, RIA, Client/Server,.NET and Java applications running in a virtualized desktop environment Precise response time, throughput, latency, and end-to-end transaction times for any business activity / process running in a virtualized desktop environment, from the end user perspective: o Differentiate between sessions running on a Citrix/RDP/VDI server o Identify all the Citrix/RDP servers that a specific End Point is connected to o Identify the connected End Points of each Citrix/RDP server o Identify the specific processes on Citrix/RDP servers that are serving an End Point session In-depth insight into end user application usage, usability, activity and productivity in a virtualized desktop environment Advanced Analytics & Correlation supporting preemptive problem detection in virtualized desktop environments: o Preemptively detect problems across all three primary components of user experience o Isolate impacted users and their associated virtualized desktops o Differentiates between the affected users and the affected service consumers o Pinpoints magnitude and business impact of the problems o Identifies probable cause Rapidly generate and clearly visualize the key metrics, and their dependencies, of all the major components of a virtualized application environment, and thereby precisely understand and describe the impact on end user productivity associated with the following scenarios: o CPU, physical, and virtual memory resources requirements linked to specific application processes - especially relevant for low-memory, low- CPU-consuming applications that have high-server density, ensuring that each server is operating at an optimized capacity 10 P a g e

11 o Network latency, inside and outside the LAN, represented by the requests and responses passing through the client-side application and the backend infrastructure o High-volume of latency-oriented communications of chatty applications with back-end systems often benefit from closer proximity to the data center as well as transmitting only screen scraped/ Resource Description Framework (RDF) images o Number of application requests and responses correlated with the impact upon the latency of average process execution starts, e.g. CPU bursts, I/O bursts, etc., determining the optimal virtualization strategy o Local storage I/O (excluding Page File) and Network Storage I/O and their associated performance impact o Velocity of screen refreshes and the magnitude of rectangles updated by the application GUI, i.e. high velocity in this instance would require large bitmap transfers and in the case of an SBC, virtualization implementation would not be recommended o Whether resource consumption by a particular application will overburden a SBC environment o If a rich-client solution would be more adept for handling the load o Real CPU, memory, and IO metrics associated with VMWare, and similar solutions, to understand precisely what is actually running on physical hardware and where end users are experiencing latency 11 P a g e

12 ITIL Implementation & Operation The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and techniques for managing information technology infrastructure, development, and operations. Originally a standard developed by the British Government, ITIL projects are currently being undertaken by most of the F500 companies. In ITIL speak, incidents are the result of failures or errors in the IT infrastructure. When an incident is considered to be serious in nature, or multiple occurrences of similar incidents are observed, a problem record might be created as a result (it's possible that the problem will not be recorded until several incidents have occurred). The management of a problem varies from the process of managing an incident and is typically performed by different staff and therefore is controlled by the problem management process. Relevant areas for the Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform include: Problem and Incident Management Service Level Management Capacity Management Change Management Software Asset Management. Below are some of the core capabilities and business benefits that Aternity provides organizations seeking to enable ITIL-driven IT organizations: Improve Communication between Business and IT o Supports use of common, agreed terminology to allow quick information dissemination inside the IT department and in communication with the business Improve Service, Faster Problem Resolution o Real-time incident classification according to affected users and the probable cause o Quick resolution of incidents through early warning, passing of relevant information to Service Managers and understanding of actual resolution times o Data mining of recurring Incidents to find Problems that need more systemic problem solving o Generation of errors, ITIL-speak for recurring probable causes Cost Reduction o Informed capacity planning, i.e. understand what data center capacity improvements actually improve frontline performance 12 P a g e

13 About Aternity Aternity, an Intel Capital portfolio company, redefines end user experience management by providing the industry s first Frontline Performance Intelligence platform designed to dramatically reduce business disruptions and significantly increase end user productivity. With Aternity, Global 1000 enterprises benefit from proactive IT management through self-learning, preemptive problem detection, and right-time decision support. By uniquely transforming every desktop real or virtual into a selfmonitoring platform that is user-experience aware, the Aternity FPI Platform arms IT and business executives with the empirical evidence on how application performance and usage impacts business results. With more than 100 years of combined experience, the Aternity management team brings together leading entrepreneurs, technologists and business leaders from the US and Israel. Aternity s management team was named to the shortlist for the 2008 American Business Awards within the Best Management Team category. Additionally, the company s co-founder and CTO, Eden Shochat, was named a Top 40 Israeli Internet Startup Professional by The Marker magazine for trailblazing high-tech innovation in emerging markets. Aternity was recently named a Gartner Cool Vendor in IT Operations and a Top 10 Most Promising Start-up by Ernst & Young and Globes. In addition, the company continues to garner industry accolades as a revolutionary solution that uniquely analyzes and correlates all three of the primary components that influence end user experience, in real time. Aternity was also recently recognized by Network World magazine as one of the Top 10 Companies to Watch for innovative new management technology. NetworkWorld is the leading newsweekly published by NetworkWorld, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge. In addition, Aternity is regularly featured in industry research published by Gartner, Forrester Research, EMA, IDC, and The 451 Group. The company and its leadership team have also been featured in a number of media publications including PC Magazine, Forbes, Red Herring, Computerworld, CRN, and InfoWorld. Rapid implementation and integration results in immediate ROI, making Aternity the industry s fastest path to end user experience management for enterprise applications. To learn how Aternity can bring winning performance to your frontline and to find out if you qualify for a free proof-of-concept, visit LEARN MORE ABOUT ATERNITY BY VISITING INFO@ATERNITY.COM 13 P a g e