Optimize business productivity and IT investments by monitoring application transaction times from the end-user perspective.

As companies increasingly seek to evolve IT from a cost center into a strategic business partner, IT management needs the ability to measure actual system performance and its impact on the organization. Performance Guard™ empowers IT to monitor its influence on service quality and staff productivity, as well as the overall value it delivers to the business.

The Performance Guard™ Web and Client Server Business Transaction Monitor Modules are the only products on the market to enable IT staff to gain real-time measurements of actual web and client/server application business transaction processing times from the clients' perspective. The solution auto detects applications and the performance thresholds in the infrastructure enabling IT to quickly understand core enterprise applications and set baseline performance of these without any pre-defined knowledge. . With it, IT is able to monitor and measure transaction performance at any business functionality level and how its performance impact service quality, employee productivity and overall value to the business.

By having the ability to identify performance issues quickly and proactively, IT is able to manage their discipline as a business service while optimizing their investments.

The Web and Client/Server Application Business Transaction Modules extend Performance Guard™ with the ability to monitor end-user quality of service by delivering consistent, accurate measurement of application performance from the end-user perspective in real time. The Business Transaction Monitor Module takes Performance Guard™ capabilities to the next level by measuring the exact time it takes for an end-user's PC to process business and Web application transactions.

Business Application Transactions

By engaging timers on selected applications, IT staff can define the individual transactions to monitor, including an option to incorporate the time it takes for the end-user to act, and obtain real-time measurements of processing time from the client's side – not just when the server received a request to its response. The Business Transaction Monitor Module supports all applications that allow access to the source code, so companies can monitor performance of critical programs, such as accounting, customer service, sales force automation, or human resources.

For example, a contact center manager may need to understand exactly how agents are spending their time on calls. With the Performance Guard™ Web and Client/Server Business Transaction Module, IT can closely examine as many business transactions that take place during the call from the time it was answered to the time it was completed. Perhaps they need to determine how long it is taking for the agent to access an existing customer's record, update it, or create a new one. By placing timers at the start- and end-points of these transactions, the contact center manager will gain an accurate understanding of the time it takes for the entire transaction, including all of its logical components, to be carried out. This data can then be examined across agents and/or geographies to determine performance baselines and goals.

Web Application Transactions

For Web-based application processing - like loading a web based ERP or portal application - the Web Business Transaction Module can provide response times for any transaction involved in the process. For web applications, this is done by setting up transaction filters – for either http or secure https applications.

The Web Business Transaction Module will list all of the possible transactions that can be monitored. The user determines which to monitor, or choose to monitor all of them, without impacting the source code. Ideal for application developers and testers, ASP solution providers or e-commerce vendors, the Web Business Transaction Module enables them to monitor any application that is launched from a browser to gain real-time insight into actual transactions from an end-user perspective. They are also able to perform trend analyses over time.

Take as an example, a sales force that uses the Web-based automation solution from SalesForce.com. The sales manager doesn't want them wasting time waiting for the application to respond when they are searching for a prospect's record or saving a new customer record. IT can view all the transactions involved in these processes to determine which are being used most often, which are the slowest, and therefore, which ones need adjustments. Or, a Web master can examine the transactions involved in accessing a Web site to see which elements are causing the most latency, and then optimize the Web page.