* New data center appliance enables end-to-end visibility, earns analyst kudos
In what one analyst has labeled an application performance management (APM) game-changer, Compuware last week [oct12] took the wraps off a software as a service (SaaS)-based appliance that enables visibility from an enterprise’s data center clear to the end user.
In what one analyst has labeled an application performance management game-changer, Compuware last week took the wraps off a software-as-a-service-based appliance that enables visibility from an enterprise’s data center clear to the end user.
The appliance, called Gomez First Mile, works in conjunction with the Gomez Internet monitoring service, which allows an organization to detect Web application performance problems as measured from real computers at 150,000 locations around the world. “That’s the last-mile concept, and now this data center appliance provides the other bookend — first-mile visibility,” says Eric Schurr, senior vice president of marketing with Compuware’s Web Performance Division, Gomez. (Compuware acquired Gomez late last year.)
First Mile addresses APM improvements in a few of ways. First, it allows enterprises to quantify the business impact of a Web performance problem by showing them what percentage of users are impacted by the issue. This helps establish priorities, Schurr says.
“IT operations teams get alerts all day long, and sometimes they become numb to them because they can’t tell which are of higher priority than others. Of course, the highest-priority problems are the ones directly impacting the business — which they can see with First Mile,” he adds.
Second, First Mile helps IT more rapidly identify root causes and speed resolutions, Schurr says. It does so by identifying in which of four buckets a problem originates — inside the data center; on the Internet in general; because of a third-party provider, such as a Web analytics tool or ad server; or due to incompatibilities with a browser or mobile device. And, if the problem resides in the data center, First Mile provides drill downs into the server farm or load balancers, for example, and deeper diagnostics.
Lastly, because First Mile works with rest of the Gomez platform, the SaaS-based appliance deploys in hours vs. months of products of similar ilk.
“Gomez First Mile is the first solution that unifies real-user and active monitoring to automatically correlate traffic volume, data center, and end-user response time, providing instant visibility into how many users and page views are impacted by internal and external performance issues,” said Tony Baer, senior analyst with Ovum, in a prepared statement.
In another prepared statement, Dennis Drogseth, vice president at Enterprise Management Associates, called First Mile “a breath of fresh air” for providing a cohesive view of application performance with cross-domain awareness. The product’s price point and time to deployment should make it “hugely attractive,” he said.
Base pricing for First Mile begins at $20,000 per year. In determining the annual subscription price, Compuware considers thenumber of Web servers in use and the number of pages to be monitored, Schurr says. Traffic volume does not affect pricing.
