Improving end-user experience [ComputerWorld]
Bernd Harzog discusses end-user experience management in the software section of ComputerWorld, the IT Management magazine.
“Do you find that despite the small fortune you have spent on products to manage your servers, networks and applications, your business constituencies still complain about the performance, usability and availability of key business applications?
If so, it might be time to expand your performance management horizons to include the end-user experience. Traditional monitoring and management tools focus on factors that impact but are blind to the actual end-user experience. While they are excellent at measuring application availability, they provide no insight into real application performance from the perspective of the end user. And what is that perspective? As far as end users are concerned, an application is “not performing” whenever it does not work as expected — when it’s slow, when it’s continually spitting out error messages or when the user interface is so counterintuitive the only option is to create a work-around.
A focus on the end user is the key to driving adoption and efficient and effective use of your critical business applications. This process starts with deciding on your approach. There are three basic types of end-user experience management products: scripted synthetic agents, passive network appliances and passive client agents.”
