TeaLeaf Technology Redefines Web Site “Availability”
Web Application Management Leader Dismisses System Uptime and Performance as “Misleading” and “Outdated” Indicators of Application Reliability
San Francisco, CA, October 6, 2003 – TeaLeaf Technology, the leader in application availability as measured by the real user, today announced its vision to redefine the concept of Web application availability. TeaLeaf’s expanded definition of application availability encourages enterprises to measure application health not simply in terms of uptime and page load speed, but by incorporating the most important metric of all the perspective of the real user simply trying to complete a business process.
In its new white paper, “Open for Business? The New Availability Is Focused on Users, Not Applications.” TeaLeaf states that the current reliance on system uptime as the only measure of Web application health is misleading, outdated and ultimately misguided. Despite expenditures for traditional systems and performance management solutions increasing exponentially, the true health of business-critical Web applications is not getting better. While these applications may perform better, they are unable to meet their business objectives growing top-line revenue at lower total cost because business processes and transactions are not completed or inaccurate at alarming rates, even for the best performing sites.
A 2002 study funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated that software errors cost the U.S. economy about $59.5 billion a year. More recently, Consumer Reports estimated that as many as one-third of the 8 million computer users who seek technical support from software manufacturers every year never get the help they need. These errors and malfunctions limit the real availability of applications, since every user can’t complete every transaction, every time, despite the stellar uptime and performance metrics of most sites. “Open for Business?” is available at http://www.tealeaf.com/downloads/open_for_business.pdf .
Jean-Pierre Garbani, Research Leader, Computing Infrastructures at Forrester Research, Inc. has recently examined this issue, stating:, “50 percent of service disruptions are reported by end users through the help desk and not by management products. Analyzing these problems leads to finger pointing, wasted resources and long resolution times – the exact opposite of service management.” As a result, he continues, “80 percent of management software available today solves only 20 percent of the service failures.” (“Managing IT as a Service: A Federated Model,” December 2, 2002).
According to Geoff Galat, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management for TeaLeaf -- author of “Open for Business?” -- what’s needed is a simple shift in perspective. “Instead of focusing on system and application performance, real availability should be focused on the actual experience of real users. The availability of a system must be measured from the perspective of the single constant and the final arbiter of success: the ability of your customers to conduct business.”
Web application performance SLAs are typically based upon page load generation speeds in the range of 5-8 seconds. Such measurements are based on the deployment of synthetic scripts that simulate potential user behavior. Web system uptime is largely based on component-level views of the technology infrastructure. SLAs are typically written to reward IT teams that can guarantee delivery of Web pages within 5-8 seconds or less and anywhere from 99.9% to 99.999% uptime
The reality, however, is that just because an application is up, it is not necessarily available. Solely because a page loads within acceptable parameters doesn’t mean the real user successfully conducted business.
“There is one measurement metric that crosses all industries, all processes, and all systems: the success of the real-user,” said Frank Vaculin, President and CEO of TeaLeaf. “And yet, IT organizations are currently employing no tools or methodologies to ensure this. Traditional systems and performance monitoring solutions have focused on infrastructure while we ignore the bottom line -- a system is only as useful as the functionality it delivers to your customer.”
Real Availability With RealiTea
TeaLeaf RealiTea is the first and only Web application management solution that helps IT operations rapidly identify, recreate, and diagnose application-level and business process failures. Because RealiTea captures and evaluates the complete session of every real user, it can immediately identify application errors and business process failures. By providing the means to replay every individual session, it can visually pinpoint the sequence of actions that preceded an application-level error, exactly as the user saw it. RealiTea provides the necessary visibility into what the real user does and sees, the required context to recreate the problem and what led up to it, and the means to correlate the problem back to the individual user or users effected. As a result, RealiTea can increase the availability of Web applications, reduce application support costs, and protect revenue streams.
About TeaLeaf Technology
TeaLeaf Technology® is the leader in application availability as measured by the real user, and is the only Web application management solution focused on the true availability of Web applications. Using patented technology, the award-winning TeaLeaf solution captures every user session, detects business process and application failures in real time, alerts to these problems immediately, and correlates the problems to the end user instantly. The result to IT is immediate awareness of critical failures, accelerated problem resolution and increased conversion rates due to better, more effective applications. TeaLeaf is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For more information, email info@tealeaf.com or visit the Web site at http://www.tealeaf.com.
Copyright 2003 TeaLeaf Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. TeaLeaf products and services mentioned herein are the registered or unregistered trademarks and service marks of TeaLeaf Technology, Inc. All other trademarks or service marks are the property of their respective holders and are hereby acknowledged.
Press Contacts:
TeaLeaf Technology
Tim Smith
415.932.5053
tsmith@tealeaf.com
Kulesa Public Relations
Cathy Wright
650.595.1871
cathy@kulesapr.com
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