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Gomez Inc. turned up the heat in the market for Internet performance testing services Tuesday when it launched the latest version of its Gomez Performance Network.
In GPN 5.0, the Waltham, Mass., company has integrated the “last mile” testing capability it acquired with Porivo Technologies Inc., bringing the ability to test customer Web sites from as many as 10,000 user desktops located around the globe.
The peer-to-peer platform can execute test transactions from those user desktops against Gomez customer Web sites. “We took their distributed technology and know-how and applied it to our agents and testing know-how, and we can now go to our customer base to demonstrate the value this unique insight brings,” said Matt Poepsel, director of product management at Gomez.
That kind of insight—especially for more advanced customers looking to refine the performance of their e-commerce applications—can be an eye-opener for customers.
For example, an event inside the firewall can degrade response time from two to four seconds. Correlating that with a backbone measurement could show the degradation increasing to six seconds. But going to the last mile, where a customer is on a dial-up link, could show the event amplifying degradation to as many as 30 seconds.
“You can understand how a small event ripples through the Internet and causes a significant performance impact to the dial-up user,” said Terry Meehan, director of strategic marketing for Gomez. “What they used to think of as a minor event—this gives a new context for understanding inside-the-firewall-events and their impact.”
Gomez also streamlined the development and execution of Internet application tests. Users can define their testing methodology and specify the number of PCs to be included in the tests as well as their geographic location and Internet access mode, whether it is dial-up or broadband.
“One customer found they were able to quickly create and provision a test and see it running moments after they hit go,” Poepsel said. “Being able to understand what they want to test, create the test and see the impact of it in moments is key to driving business decisions.”
Although the enhancements will not likely change the competitive landscape, they do give Gomez an edge in some areas, said Glenn ODonnell, program director at META Group Inc. in Palmerton, Pa.
“I think Mercury [Interactive] has the best overall diagnostics—especially with J2EE applications. But Gomez has more points of presence and a better price point,” ODonnell said. “Keynote [Systems] is the big dog in the game, but they havent been known for their price point or deep diagnostics.”
GPN 5.0 is available now.