As an increasing number of companies are relying on service providers to manage their mission-critical applications, service providers are realizing that they need an improved method for consistently delivering reliable and highly available service at a competitive cost.

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"As service providers are being relied on to manage mission-critical applications by a growing number of clients, they have begun to recognize the need to have management services that can scale and ensure QoS. " Give us your feedback in the ASPnews Discussion Forum

Measuring the performance and availability of Web and enterprise applications is inherently difficult. Without accurate and timely measurements it is all but impossible to measure customer satisfaction and Quality of Service (QoS). Due to the cost of developing and implementing such a solution, service providers are finding they need to partner with others in the marketplace to ensure service level agreements (SLAs) are being met and the end-user experience is optimized.

A quality end-user experience is what service srovider clients require and what service sroviders must deliver in order to survive. Online shoppers are not tied by brand loyalty since they can get what they need at many different sites. Companies that want to achieve customer loyalty must deliver value through the customer experience. By outsourcing to service providers for this expertise, companies are entrusting their business and reputation on the solutions they offer. This makes it doubly important that service sroviders choose solutions that deliver on their SLAs.

The ideal solution a service provider can offer to their customers measures the true end-to-end customer experience of heterogeneous applications on a continuous basis. These measurements must be taken from both an internal (behind firewall) and external (from Internet) point of view in order to understand how each item impacts customer service.

Understand the True End-to-End User Experience of a Web Application
Two types of Web monitoring techniques exist in the marketplace today — infrastructure monitoring, which measures the performance of the Internet or Internet latency; and transaction monitoring, which measures the performance of a Web application.

The goal of transaction monitoring is to verify that an application is running and exhibiting acceptable performance from the end-users' point of view. This method monitors the speed and availability of a Web-based transaction, which can be anything from buying a book to conducting a Web search to making arrangements for an upcoming vacation.

This method of Web site monitoring is useful for a variety of reasons. First, it monitors real user transactions. Most visitors go through a series of pages at a site rather than just touching the home page or any other single page. While these Web transactions involve Web servers, application servers and databases, popular e-commerce sites will also need to test credit card verification systems. At the same time, many legacy applications will involve accessing mainframes. By monitoring transactions you can test these systems in addition to Web servers, thus giving you a clear picture of exactly what your customer is experiencing at any given moment.

What to Look for in the Ideal Transaction Monitoring Application
There are several items for service providers to consider when evaluating a monitoring application that will deliver the best QoS evaluation. First, the ideal transaction monitoring solution would be a service rather than an application that needs to be installed, or downloaded and then installed. This will save time not only in configuring the software, but also in training IT personnel. By choosing to have the solution delivered as a service, companies get ease-of-use and a simplified set-up and configuration process so they can quickly get up-to-speed on how their site is performing. The service model also allows them to pay on a subscription basis, eliminating the need for a huge upfront cost.

Second, watch out for some monitoring applications, which require users to record scripts at the site using software that has to be downloaded and then installed on a computer. Sometimes these scripts need to be processed by the company that created the monitoring device to ensure the monitoring device can replay the script. Instead of recording the transaction as a script, a transaction monitoring service should allow a company to configure the transaction by showing or teaching the service what to monitor. If this process can be done online in real time, it is much easier and faster than downloading and installing the configuration software.

Likewise, service providers need to look for monitoring software that allows them to update transactions in real time as they make changes to their sites. Businesses constantly modify their Web sites to keep up with the ever-changing marketplace and their customers' needs. As a result, they need a flexible tool that enables them to make changes in a matter of minutes. The process of downloading and installing recording software, recording a transaction, sending the recorded script to the software company and then waiting for the script to be tweaked and installed at various sites may be as long as a few days. This timeframe is not acceptable to companies who want to keep in touch with their customers' true experience in order to succeed in the e-business market.

Next, the ideal transaction-monitoring service supports all dynamic HTML, including JSP, ASP, CGI and servlets. Look for the capability to replay a user transaction correctly, including handling session IDs, which enable visitors to view their own unique or personalized content. While many user transactions involve the use of session IDs, a number of transaction-monitoring applications on the market simply replay the recorded HTTP requests without replacing the session IDs. This type of monitoring is not testing the site, nor is it correctly representing the true customer experience.

And finally, look for a transaction-monitoring service that provides low-level technical data on a transaction's performance as well as executive summary reports comparing the Web site's performance against SLAs. By offering different reporting levels, executives, business managers and IT personnel are all able to gain information about a site's performance and; therefore, what their customers are experiencing. Companies can save time and money by using the same application to see how its site compares to executive goals as well as to identify any problems.

Service Providers: Educate Yourself
How can service providers determine QoS best practices? The best way to do this is through education. Read all you can on the subject and ask questions. Try visiting qualityofexperience.org, created by BMC Software, Sun Microsystems and PriceWatehouseCoopers in cooperation with Patricia Seybold Group and Summit Strategies. It features a variety of tools to help visitors understand QoE including articles, research, an online discussion group, a list of relevant vendors and links to other Web resources.

Sun, PricewaterhouseCoopers and BMC Software are also the co-founders of the nextslm.org Web site focusing on service level management (SLM), which is the foundation for effective customer quality of experience. This site describes how effective SLM depends on IT or the service provider providing the particular service that the customer needs, when the customer needs it, and delivers valuable information on SLM best practices.

Another good resource is the ASP Industry Consortium, a global advocacy group promoting the ASP industry by sponsoring research and articulating the strategic and measurable benefits of this delivery model. More than 700 members in 30 countries on five continents have joined the Consortium. Review the ASPIC Best Practices SLA Guide online.

Conclusion: Master Measuring Quality of Service
As service providers are being relied on to manage mission-critical applications by a growing number of clients, they have begun to recognize the need to have management services that can scale and ensure QoS. Compared to applications that monitor Internet latency, a transaction-monitoring service enables Service Providers to monitor what they are able to control — the performance and availability of their client's Web sites. This measurement of QoS is the only way to truly represent the real end-user experience.