Want to undertake performance testing for your business applications? Importance and objectives you should know

Performance testing is being increasingly undertaken by organizations which depend on applications for critical business activities. Such performance testing of applications can help evaluate how the applications are performing and are crucial for avoiding downtime in mission-critical applications. IT teams can ensure that all applications being tested are available on time so that the bottom line of the organization is not affected by outages. Such availability can also ensure that all service level agreement conditions are met. For you to test the performance of your business applications, you need to know why you require it and what objectives performance testing can achieve for your organization.

Performance Testing: Importance


• Performance testing of all business critical application is important as it helps in improving the overall quality of services provided


• It is only through performance testing that you can ensure that all applications are available so that the end users have a smooth and satisfactory experience when buying your products or services


• Testing is also important if you want to meet all the terms mentioned in the service level agreement


• You can also avoid facing bottlenecks which hamper your business growth. Testing of applications ensures that all problems are solved before the applications go into the production stage


• Performance testing of applications helps meet the expectations of clients for a fast and reliable application
  

Performance Testing: Objectives


• Comparing the performance of two or more applications


• Analyzing the bottlenecks in applications and creating a plan for solving them


• Minimizing the costs through performance testing


• Reducing the response time of applications


• Meeting service level agreement conditions


• Ensuring that all applications meet the criteria set by the organization and its clients


• Eliminating any error or malfunctions in all applications before they go into the production stage

A majority of organizations which use applications for revenue-generating activities have realized the importance of performance testing and are using the appropriate tools which help them maintain the heath of their applications. Until a few years ago, multiple testing solutions were required for different applications. But with the rising popularity of performance testing, APM solution providers now provide integrated tools which cover all applications across an organization. There are many professional APM solution providers which can provide a customized performance testing tool for your organization, with which you can optimize the performance of all applications. This will not only help you meet service level agreement conditions, but will also prevent downtimes in critical applications.

Tevron Solutions Fully Support all Microsoft Dynamics Environments

CitraTest, CitraTest VU, and CitraTest APM are the only single license, integrated solutions for conducting application performance monitoring, functional, regression and latency testing for every enterprise application that is accessible from a Windows based machine.

Nashua, New Hampshire, March 5, 2010 – Tevron today announced the addition of support for all Microsoft Dynamics environments to its suite of APM & Testing solutions. Microsoft Dynamics is a line of familiar, adaptable enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions designed to meet almost any business need and help people make important business decisions confidently. With the latest releases of CitraTest, CitraTest APM, and CitraTest VU, Tevron again is taking the lead role in the APM & testing industry in providing support for every Microsoft Dynamics environment. As companies across the world move towards Microsoft Dynamics, Tevron’s APM & testing solutions will continue to offer the industry lead for application monitoring, load testing, and general automation for those deployments.

To learn more about Tevron’s automated testing solutions or to request additional information, please call +1.702.518.7435 or visit www.tevron.com.

ABOUT TEVRON

Tevron® is a global leader in APM and Automated Testing. Through our all encompassing customer-centric vision and advanced technology, our APM & Testing Solutions allow the unique flexibility of supporting every application across the enterprise with one methodology delivering the ability to test, monitor, enforce SLAs, and optimize performance with confidence and ease. Founded in 2001, Tevron® is a global organization and is privately held. Our vast and diverse range of customers are global leaders and include companies such as Alcon Labs, Alverno, Northrop Grumman, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Siemens, and Lucent Technologies, to name a few.

TRADEMARKS

Tevron, the Tevron logo, and CitraTest are registered trademarks of Tevron, LLC. Microsoft Dynamics is a registered trademark of Microsoft. All other product references herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Tevron Solutions Fully Support All Microsoft 64-bit Operating Systems

CitraTest, CitraTest VU, and CitraTest APM are the only single license, integrated solutions for conducting application performance monitoring, functional, regression and latency testing for every enterprise application that is accessible from a Windows based machine.

Nashua, New Hampshire, December 4, 2009 - Tevron today announced the addition of support for all Microsoft 64-bit operating systems to its suite of APM & Testing solutions. In addition to monitoring and testing any application that is running on the Windows 64-bit platform, now Tevron's APM & Testing solutions can be run directly on any Windows 64-bit platform as well. These operating systems include Windows 7 x64 Edition, Windows XP x64 Edition, Windows 2008 Server x64 Edition, Windows 2003 Server x64 Edition, and Windows Vista x64 Edition. With 64-bit support, IT organizations can take full advantage of the latest powerful PCs and optimize the monitoring and testing experience. With the latest releases of CitraTest, CitraTest APM, and CitraTest VU, Tevron again is taking the lead role in the APM & testing industry in providing support for every 64-bit Windows environment and every application that is accessible from every 64-bit Windows environment. As companies across the world upgrade to the 64-bit editions of the various Windows operating systems, Tevron's APM & testing solutions will continue to offer the industry lead for application monitoring, load testing, and general automation.

To learn more about Tevron’s automated testing solutions or to request additional information, please call +1.702.518.7435 or visit http://www.tevron.com.

ABOUT TEVRON:

Tevron is a global leader in APM and Automated Testing. Through our all encompassing customer-centric vision and advanced technology, our APM & Testing Solutions allow the unique flexibility of supporting every application across the enterprise with one methodology delivering the ability to test, monitor, enforce SLAs, and optimize performance with confidence and ease. Founded in 2001, Tevron is a global organization and is privately held. Our vast and diverse range of customers are global leaders and include companies such as Alcon Labs, Alverno, Northrop Grumman, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Siemens, and Lucent Technologies, to name a few.
Visit: http://www.tevron.com

TRADEMARKS:

Tevron, the Tevron logo, and CitraTest are registered trademarks of Tevron, LLC. Windows 7 x64 Edition, Windows XP x64 Edition, Windows 2008 Server x64 Edition, Windows 2003 Server x64 Edition, and Windows Vista x64 Edition are registered trademarks of Microsoft. All other product references herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Application Monitoring: 5 Steps to ensure effective monitoring of business-critical applications

Businesses are starting to give due importance to application monitoring of business critical applications, which prevents bottlenecks from affecting end users. Application monitoring also ensures that any glitches in the application can be solved quickly and efficiently before they become bigger problems. In addition to this, monitoring makes sure that application performance is up to the mark so that the business can function efficiently. The following are 5 steps through which you can ensure effective application monitoring for all business applications.

ADVANCED PLANNING

The first step for effective application monitoring is to plan well in advance. Application monitoring cannot be undertaken unless a roadmap is laid out. This is true especially in case of a new application or software. Such monitoring ensures that application performance is also on par with the business standards which are set.

PROACTIVE APPLICATION MONITORING

Many businesses make the mistake of ignoring application monitoring unless there is a problem in it. This is a blunder, as waiting for a problem to occur before solving it may affect end users adversely. Application monitoring should be proactive and constant so that any bottlenecks in the application can be dealt with before they start affecting end users. Constantly monitoring applications also results in optimum application performance. IT managers can undertake proactive monitoring by establishing threshold values of IT infrastructure like bandwidth, CPU, memory etc. In case these parameters are exceeded, they can perform a system health check to prevent a major problem.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

A written contract like a service level agreement (SLA) can serve businesses well and establish the extent to which application monitoring needs to be undertaken. The IT team can determine the requirements and measure application availability according to the standards set in the service level agreement.

FORM A RECOVERY PLAN FOR APPLICATION FAILURE

An important step in ensuring application monitoring is to have a well-prepared recovery plan in case of application failure. Sometimes, despite taking precautions and ensuring application performance of business-critical applications, they fail; in such a scenario, the IT team needs to ensure that the error is rectified as soon as possible so that there is minimum impact to business bottom line.

GET PROFESSIONAL HELP

If your business-critical applications are not being monitored for application performance, your bottom line may get affected in case of a serious problem in any application. You can get the help of a professional for application monitoring. There are many service providers today who offer customized APM solutions which cover all the applications within the organization, and are highly efficient in ensuring optimum application performance. Such APM solutions can help you ensure that applications are available and there is minimum downtime.

4 Features To Look For In Your Application Performance Management Solution

An application performance management solution is required when a business has critical aspects being handled by applications at the back end. Even a small glitch in important applications can result in a downtime, which can affect bottom lines of a business. Thus an application performance management solution is a must for businesses which use applications for service support. There is a confusing array of APM solutions available in the market today and selecting the appropriate one is a tough task. Mentioned below are 4 features in an APM solution must have in order to effectively undertake application monitoring.

1. Capable of monitoring end user experience

End user monitoring tools help in judging application performance. Such tools do not require any installation and are a simple plug and play solution. In the event of your end user monitoring tool showing any latency, the application performance management tool needs to be able to spot them. Only if your APM solution is able to monitor end user experience effectively, will you be able to solve the problem. Such an application performance management tool should also be affordable for your business.



2. Help in management of the data center

Applications being used by businesses today are complex, interdependent and scattered, which creates a requirement for data center management. Application performance can only be judged through an APM solution which enables data center management. The data center as a whole needs to be taken into consideration if the application performance management solution has to solve the problem. But due to the fact that data center management tools use information of softwares of server management from various tiers, there is a lot of resource consumption metrics which will not make a connection of application performance and what the end user experiences. In such cases, if the end users are not monitored, problems will come to the fore only in case users call up the service desk to complain.



3. Capability in monitoring network performance

Monitoring of network performance is also an integral part of application performance management. This is because if the latencies being shown in the applications do not match with end user experience, the APM solution will not be effective. Effective application monitoring can be done only if the APM solution monitors network performance.



4. Business transaction management

In order to cover all the important issues given above, each business transaction within the organization needs to be monitored. This means that each and every transaction right from the end user to the network to the data center needs to be monitored. This process is called Business Transaction Management.

4 Major Application Monitoring Challenges Faced by Businesses Organizations

Application monitoring challenges are faced by almost all business organizations which utilize applications for their daily business. Any problem that interrupts performance of business-critical applications affects the bottom line of the business as well. It is hence necessary to identify the major challenges of application monitoring before figuring out how to deal with them. The following are some challenges which are faced by organizations using applications for conducting business:

Monitoring Applications Proactively
In order to prevent and solve application problems from affecting end users, proactive application monitoring needs to be undertaken. But ensuring application availability is only possible if a certain threshold level has been defined. A major challenge in proactive monitoring is studying the performance of applications in order to set a threshold. In case this threshold is surpassed, the monitoring tool generates a real time alert. The IT department thus needs to first figure out how many processes need constant monitoring based on which the threshold can be set.

Monitoring of Multiple & Complex Applications
If an organization has global users then the applications may become very complex. This is due to the fact that applications have to support multiple locations, languages and cultures. For effective application monitoring of such global applications, understanding the interconnectivity of the applications and their flow becomes necessary.

Monitoring Shared Applications
Applications are often shared in order to have optimum utilization of resources. Monitoring a single application is a relatively simple task. But when an application is shared, application monitoring becomes a challenge in which logs, memory, disk resources etc. need to be tracked constantly. For example, one single application sucking up all the resources would affect other applications and thereby pull down their performance. Only a perfect APM solution combined with rigorous monitoring can spot this problem and resolve it.

Clustered Application Monitoring
Applications are many a times hosted in clustered environments with systems located at separate places. This poses a challenge in application monitoring of tracking failure logs, resources like disk, memory etc. Only after monitoring these various components can the IT team determine which application is causing the problem.

To overcome all these challenges of application monitoring, a strong monitoring tool is required. There are many service providers available in the market, which offer APM solutions including application monitoring, which help ensure that service level agreements are met. Hiring only the best APM solution provider can help simplify the monitoring process and also meet all the challenges of application monitoring.