Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing
April 03, 2013

Jim Rapoza
Aberdeen Group

Share this

Many years ago, the word “real” had its heyday in the world of product marketing. Plenty of commercials and advertisements would tout the “realness” of products.

But I always found this a little confusing. If one cereal had “real ingredients”, did that mean that the competitors used fake ingredients?

Luckily, in the world of application testing and performance management, there is an actual distinction between real and fake, especially when it comes to users. There are plenty of performance management products that will use fake or synthetic user profiles to enable load testing of applications before they go live. These “fake” tests provide a lot of value, making it possible to detect and fix problems before an application ends up in front of “real” users.

But smart businesses understand that they need to also include those real users as part of their performance management strategy. This has led to the rise of real-user monitoring in performance management.

While real-user monitoring (often referred to as RUM) has been around for years now, there is a growing emphasis on its use throughout all aspects of application performance management. Increasingly, businesses have recognized that one of the best metrics of an application’s success will be found by monitoring and analyzing the performance and user experience of applications from the viewpoint of real application users.

In the new Aberdeen Group research report Performance Management Gets Real About Users, I examine the importance of real-user monitoring as part of an overall performance management strategy, and analyze how leading companies gain improved application performance and user experience by looking at performance from the perspective of a real user.

Because while “real” may not mean much when it comes to describing a soft drink, knowing how real people are experiencing an application is key to ensuring the best performance and success of that application.

Jim Rapoza is Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group.

Related Links:

Aberdeen Report: Performance Management Gets Real About Users

Aberdeen IT Infrastructure Practice

Share this