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Compuware has delivered a series of new tools and solutions to help enterprises better manage and monitor performance of their Web-based applications.
Detroit-based Compuware has announced what it claims is a first-of-its-kind software-as-a-service (SAAS)-based application performance management (APM) solution that provides visibility from the first mile (the data center) to the last mile (the end user).
The new Gomez First Mile, together with Gomez outside-in monitoring, allows organizations whose business depends on Web applications to quickly assess the business impact of a problem and instantly determine whether the cause of the problem resides in the data center, on the Internet, with a third-party provider, or with the user’s browser or device, said Rich Bentley, director of solution marketing at Compuware. In addition to its end-to-end visibility, the Gomez First Mile helps to deliver value in hours versus traditional data center solutions requiring weeks or months.
“This is a game changing move in application performance management,” said Tony Baer, senior analyst with the Ovum market research firm. “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.”
This announcement represents the next phase in Compuware’s strategic vision of bringing together enterprise and Internet application performance management, Bentley said.
“We believe the First Mile represents the most disruptive technology the APM market has seen since the introduction of appliance-based real user monitoring a decade ago,” said Bob Paul, president and chief operating officer at Compuware, in a statement. “Its differentiation comes from two simple concepts: end-to-end visibility across the enterprise and Internet that has never before been possible, and a deployment model that delivers value in literally hours instead of months. This is the first of many innovations to come as part of our enterprise-Internet strategy.”
Compuware also introduced the Gomez First Mile Appliance, a real-user monitoring appliance that enables enterprises to quickly identify, prioritize and resolve Web application performance problems from the data center to the end user. By taking the power of Compuware Vantage’s technology, the Gomez First Mile unifies real-user monitoring and active, synthetic monitoring to quantify business impact and isolate root causes of Web performance issues. With the appliance, users can eliminate blind spots across the entire Web application delivery chain by providing deep diagnostics to find and fix performance problems fast.
The Gomez First Mile appliance is installed via a “cable box-like” installation process in which it self-configures, and is operational within hours. It is managed through the Gomez SAAS Portal, providing rapid time to value. By extending Gomez’s SAAS-based “outside-In” view further into the data center, organizations can immediately identify if a performance problem is inside or outside their firewall.
“We acquired Gomez a year ago, and Compuware’s always been strong at providing APM in the data center, and Gomez did the same outside the data center on the Internet,” Bentley told eWEEK. “So after we closed the acquisition, we did the first level of integration of our technologies. What we’re announcing here takes that to a whole new level. This matches our data center technology with the Gomez SAAS technology and takes it from the first mile to the last mile. So you can immediately see if there’s a problem with a Web app and what the reason is for the problem. Then we drill down from there to give you a quick view across the delivery chain. And it’s completely delivered as a SAAS solution.”
Dashboard Determines Origin of Web Performance Issue
The Gomez First Mile is delivered as part of Compuware’s Fall 2010 APM release, which includes new versions of the Gomez and Vantage product lines. In this APM-wide product release, Compuware is providing major updates to both the Gomez and Vantage offerings, which are further unified through a new “First Mile to Last Mile” operations dashboard that blends diagnostics and metrics from both product lines to instantly determine if a Web performance issue originates in the data center, the Internet, a third-party provider, or a user’s browser or mobile device.
“The Gomez First Mile is a breath of fresh air,” said Dennis Drogseth, vice president at Enterprise Management Associates, in a statement. “First Mile combines a cohesive view of application performance inside and outside the firewall with cross-domain awareness-at a price point and time to deployment that should make it hugely attractive.”
In addition to the First Mile, the Gomez Fall Release also includes:
- Cross-Browser Automated Image Analysis-An automated browser image analyzer using Gomez’s patent-pending “RenderInspector” technology saves testing teams time and money.
- Gomez Multi-browser Agent Family Expansion-The Gomez multi-browser agent family has been expanded to include support for the Firefox agent across the Last Mile network and Gomez load testing. Organizations can further optimize their Web applications for all leading browsers.
- Gomez Recorder-The Gomez recorder can now be used to record scripts for active monitoring, mobile monitoring and load testing, thereby reducing training and operational costs.
Compuware also announced Compuware Vantage 11.5, which helps businesses realize the value of disruptive technologies, such as virtualization and WAN optimization, and Java/.Net application architectures by managing them as part of unified application performance solution. New functionality includes:
- VMware Ready-Provides VMware customers with the assurance that they are choosing the best solution to address their APM needs. Unlike other APM solutions, Vantage provides application performance management across both physical and virtual environments.
- WAN Optimization Support-Provides the only true real-user monitoring solution that non-intrusively measures end-user experience in Riverbed and Cisco WAAS optimized WAN environments.
- Java/.NET Analysis Driven from End-User Experience–Allows IT to manage Java and .NET applications in context of the end-user experience, as opposed to other solutions that start from the JVM/CLR perspective and rely on limited integration points between separate analysis and reporting products.
“Our Java/.NET analysis provides a new way of approaching problems,” said Terry Harshfield, director of strategy and product line management at Compuware. With the new release of Vantage, “we can peer inside the virtual stack, especially in VMware-we connect with VMware’s vCenter. We’ve been working closely with VMware and have become VMware certified.”
Added Harshfield, “It used to be that the first thing people blamed for performance issues was the network, but now it could just as easily be virtualization-a problem in your virtualized environment.”