Blog Entries

Amazon Web Services - Testing and Monitoring in the Cloud

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Amazon Web Services is leading the cloud services industry. With a large and expanding customer base, new useful products (Virtual Private Cloud - VPC), and quick access to resources, AWS provides a flexible way to build an application or solution, without the difficulties of managing your own infrastructure. However, the missing components for many companies are the services required to launch and manage an application successfully.

In our experience, the import [...]

Application Monitoring: Proactive Efficient Management

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the tenth and final entry in the 10-Series Blog post in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

Application Monitoring Enables Proactive Efficient Management

Proactive application monitoring provides the insight needed to enable efficient production management. When implementing the monitoring elements discussed in previous posts, production operations staff, whet [...]

Critical Application Management Processes

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the ninth entry in a 10-Series Blog post in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

Best practices dictates that the ability to consistently and reliability deliver an application to the market can be achieved by utilizing an integrated and well defined set of operational processes such as provided via the ITIL framework. At the onset, this can seem to be a daunting and overwhelming challenge [...]

Production Application Lifecycle Management - Tying it all Together

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the eighth entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

Building and deploying complex business applications is difficult. It is insufficient to release applications or application updates to an ill prepared IT operations organization. To maximize the value and investment in new technology, a more holistic approach must be undertaken. The f [...]

Pre-Production Stress Testing

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the seventh entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

When preparing for the launch of an application, it is crucial to understand how it will likely behave under real-world user load. Our experience indicates the best way to plan for growth and avoid surprises is to simulate the anticipated user load with a realistic and well-instrumented load [...]

Network and Storage Infrastructure

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the sixth entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

A holistic view of the application delivery infrastructure is not complete without looking at the performance and availability of the network and storage infrastructure. Access to this data is dependent upon the hosting strategy being employed. Administrator level access to the network [...]

Multi-Tenancy Alternatives: Selecting the Best Option for your Software Business

crafii@absolute-performance.com — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

I recently heard about an interesting webinar on Thursday, July 16th on business implications of SaaS Multi-Tenancy. It is apparent that Software-as-a-Service is becoming mainstream but getting it right can be the key to survival. From the single instance ASP-model to virtualization to pure multi-tenant SaaS, this webinar willcover the business implications and technical alternatives to multi-tenancy for your web based software products.

Scio Consulting, Sixteen Ventures and special gu [...]

Front End-User Interface and Web Services

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the fifth entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

Some of the most valuable business relevant metrics reside in the front end components of an application served by IIS or other web server components. As with the other layers of the application stack, the standard metrics available through WMI provide a good starting point. However, the [...]

Database and Data Access Layer Instrumentation

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the forth entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

The data access layer is most likely composed of a SQL Server database and one or more in-memory caching services, and external web services calls. Basic database monitoring is fairly straightforward and handled by most products "out of the box". However, when building a [...]

Backend Processing Component Instrumentation

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the third entry in a 10-Series Blog posts every week in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

For most applications created in the Software-plus-Services paradigm, agent-based monitoring with very low resource consumption is the most reliable and extensible approach available to enable efficient instrumentation. Further, the most efficient instrumentation approach is to use a scalable templ [...]

Application Instrumentation

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the second entry in a 10-Series Blog post every Wednesday in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

Application instrumentation is the means to monitor and report the performance of an application. This instrumentation is done by using a combination of internal and external observation methods. Internal counters can be provided by the underlying operating system and by the application layer itself. External [...]

What is a Software-Plus-Services Application?

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This is the first entry in a 10-Series Blog post every Wednesday in regards to Software-Plus-Services: Application Instrumentation, Stress Testing and Production Management.

WHAT IS A SOFTWARE-PLUS-SERVICES APPLICATION?

Software-plus-Services should not be confused as another name for SaaS. A SaaS (Software as a Service) application is simply an application delivered as a service; it does not specify what type of application architecture is involved. A Software-plus-Services app [...]

Application Performance Management Podcast

junruh@absolute-perfornance.com — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Gain insights into the challenges that business executives face delivering their business critical applications at a lower cost and higher value to their end customers. CEO Jerry Champlin talks about a complete and proven approach to addressing business requirements, no matter the size or scope of the organization.

Integration of Social Media

junruh@absolute-perfornance.com — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Social Media is obviously growing into a marketing necessity, and organizations of all sizes should take notice. In fact, a few nights ago I was watching the Denver Nuggets play the New Orleans Hornets in the first round of the playoffs and during a commercial break I got up to grab a drink and heard an NBA commercial advertising to follow the NBA on twitter. This new form of advertising social media is obviously on the rise and there are many reasons that Linkedin, Facebook and [...]

Popular Budget Cuts in a Gloomy Economy

junruh@absolute-perfornance.com — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Many companies are under extreme pressure to make budget cuts and trim expenses in an effort to stay afloat during the current economic storm that has been looming over our heads for the last 18 months. Often times, there are two major budgets that can be effected by such turmoil.

The first place many businesses look to trim on costs is the IT budget. This is a tricky area to cut, as most companies have a substantial amount of the IT budget tied to fixed costs. However, many organizati [...]

SaaS Lifecycle Management

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:00:00 +0100

There has been a lot of writing concerning the SaaS Maturity Model devised by a handful of Microsoft engineers and evangelists. This model essentially covers 4 types of SaaS deployment ranging from the ASP model to a dynamically configurable multi-instance multi-tennant model referred to as Level 4 SaaS Maturity. This is a useful discussion, however it does not address how a company can go about getting a SaaS application to market. In this series of posts and associated pr [...]

Outsourcing to Save Your Business Money

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0100

I just read an interesting post on the Tech Republic site advising CIOs on a number of areas where they can optimize their IT spend (here). In the post, it talks about the basics but doesn't really offer an upside. The truth is that most organizations spend more on IT than they get out.

My advice to CIOs is simple -- only do what adds the most value to your business and outsource the rest.

Network Management -- specialized vendors bring depth of suppor [...]

Cloud Computing and Application Lifecycle Management Services

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0100

The Parallels Summit 2009 is off to a strong start with great content in the keynote presentations and panel discussion regarding many aspects of Cloud Computing. While a lot of the focus has been on how technology components enable hosting companies to integrate Cloud Computing concepts into their business models, Andreas Gauger (Founder 1&1) summed up the opportunity for hosters by stating that service provider must find differentiated value add services to offer their [...]

Application Lifecycle Management

jgc@absolute-performance.com — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0100

What is Application Lifecycle Management and why is it important?

In an economic time when IT and technology operations budgets are being cut aggressively while technology is 5-10 times more important to business execution than it was 8 years ago, it is critical for business managers to understand how to make the most of their technology investments. At the heart of maximizing existing and new investments is the concept of Application Lifecycle Management.

It is no longer suf [...]