Common Approaches to End-user Monitoring

Monitoring end-users is essential to BSM. Once the decision is made to purchase an end-user monitoring tool, however, the company is faced with a range of choices that include cutting-edge tools from start-up software companies that target the end-user experience to proven monitoring applications from industry giants that fit into an end-to-end solution. The following are four basic end-user monitoring approaches:

Robotic Transactions, also called “synthetic transactions”, mirror the actions of an actual user. The tool typically utilizes a probe configured to appear as an end-user executing defined tasks at predefined intervals. The tool then measures the response times along with success or failure of the transaction.

Real-Time Transaction Testing employs actual transactions generated from external locations, measuring response times and performance.

Client Side Instrumentation provides agents inserted into the native client or Web browser to track the actual end-user experience in real-time.

Service Side Instrumentation uses agents placed in the infrastructure to measure the performance of devices or applications involved in a transaction.

Many companies will implement a combination of monitoring tools to gain the best visibility in the customer experience.