Application performance optimizer FineGround Inc. later this month will further help IT fine-tune Web applications delivery with a new dashboard view of performance.
The Campbell, Calif., company added the dashboard to its Enterprise Application Delivery Suite, which includes the AppScope performance monitor. The dashboard assembles statistics from AppScope to help IT understand the impact of performance problems on application services, officials said.
The dashboard can group pages and URLs into a composite transaction for reporting. The groupings can span multiple systems such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), intranets and extranets, and pages can be aggregated in multiple ways, said officials.
All response times for page visits required to complete any activity are grouped into a single unit. The aim is to help IT communicate more effectively with business users and demonstrate the value of IT to the business. But for one user, the groupings will also help improve troubleshooting.
“We have occasional debugging issues with our applications on the Internet that come into our internal network. This dashboard would instrument all the pieces across that spectrum that would be valuable for debugging,” said Kevin Heller, manager in the Web Infrastructure Group at agribusiness company Cargill Inc., in Minneapolis.
For certain performance problems at Cargill, the process now involves pulling together members of the network and application server teams, vendors and ISPs to each gather performance statistics and then compare notes. That process can take up to six weeks, Heller added.
FineGrounds dashboard includes a Wizard-based transaction builder that lets users customize how transactions are aggregated, including by URL, query string and parameters. The transaction tool also allows users to group unit transactions for reporting. Reports include executive summaries and trend reports, and IT users can drill down into page statistics to see performance breakdowns among the desktop, network and service.
The Application Delivery Dashboard is due at the end of the month.