End-user performance management in the spotlight

Application performance is irrelevant if the end user isn't getting the service he or she wants. That's why vendors such as Aternity, Coradiant, and Knoa Software emerged on the application management scene.

These vendors' products in one way or another promise to help IT managers deliver peak application performance all the way to the end-user machine. Client-side performance management comes in all shapes and sizes, and this week Aternity shared its plans for frontline management at the DEMO 08 conference. 

The company that has been stealthily building its product this week unveiled its Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform. Aternity says its software provides an end-to-end view of real-user experience on physical and virtual desktops. The application can also track transaction response times and build baseline models of application and transaction baselines. Available now, the Aternity Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform is priced at $75,000.

Aternity will officially enter a market that has already gotten a lot of attention from a number of players, including Tealeaf Technology. For instance, Coradiant has evolved its product line that tracks performance from an end-user perspective to also include technology to speed incident management. The company's TrueSight Automated Incident Management (AIM) learns normal traffic and performance metrics and identifies anomalies, prioritizing them by severity, duration, problem type and the impact on end users.

Another newcomer is Knoa Software. The vendor also proposes to look at application performance from the end user point of view -- but Knoa also wants to help IT staff understand application use patterns and adoption trends. Industry analyst firm Forrester Research says Knoa competes with companies such as Premitech, Serden Technologies and Symphoniq due to their similar approach using passive agent end-user experience monitoring suites. Forrester says Knoa is hoping to provide customers with all information they'd like to have on their end users.'

"The company's key aim is to provide a technology that is able to cover all the potential needs of an IT organization in terms of end user experience measurement," Forrester stated in a recent report.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.