Revised tool to measure application response time

By Jeff Caruso
Network World Fusion, 06/11/99

End users might know an application's response time all too well, but that doesn't mean the network manager knows. To remedy this, start-up FirstSense Software next week will release an updated version of its response-time measurement tool.

FirstSense Enterprise 2.0 will measure how quickly end users get responses when they initiate transactions using software from SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Lotus, Microsoft and others. The new version will also measure response time for all the machines used to complete a transaction; previous versions only provided for two-tier client/server applications.

Response-time measurement tools have been available for mainframes, but "we needed a similar tool in the client/server world," says Earl Newsome, chief information officer and vice president of Owens-Illinois, a manufacturer of glass and plastic packaging products.

The company is using FirstSense Enterprise to figure out where more capacity is needed and to diagnose response-time problems.

Sandia National Laboratories plans to use FirstSense Enterprise to monitor its in-house applications for administration and project tracking, says Spencer Nelson, Sandia's team leader for application analysis. These applications are accessed through a Web browser, which FirstSense now supports.

While FirstSense has good support for basic Web-based transactions, limitations on the browser support still exist, Nelson says. For example, if the content changes but the Web page name does not, the software has trouble keeping track of how a transaction is progressing. In addition, encrypted Web traffic makes it difficult for FirstSense Enterprise to determine what is happening.

The software is able to present a high-level view of how well applications are responding, but it also lets network managers drill down where needed to look at specific problems. This ability sets FirstSense Enterprise apart from other tools, says Richard Ptak, vice president of systems and application management at the Hurwitz Group of Framingham, Mass. This way, a company's CEO can get an overall view of performance, while a network manager can get technical information easily.

FirstSense Enterprise uses agents distributed on end users' systems. These agents can look at data traveling in and out of the machine, and deduce what transactions and applications are running. Performance information is stored in a central repository, which is accessed by tools that display the overall health of the applications.

FirstSense Enterprise 2.0 is shipping now, with a base price of $25,000. Modules that can recognize transactions for SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft start at $17,500.